Dreaming of Dragons
by V. Shalyr
Summary: Zeref was nine when he started dreaming of dragons, or rather, of one dragon in particular with fierce green eyes and scales that reminded him of blood and ashes. NatsuxZeref, Reincarnation story
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref (past life established, present life eventual)

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **Shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

 **AN** : I am still completely obsessed with this pair and I've had this story in my head for awhile, so here goes.

I had trouble deciding what to label this story as far as genres. It will focus predominantly on Natsu and Zeref's relationship and the way it interacts with and influences their lives (a major aspect of most of my Fairy Tail fics, I suppose), but it's not what I would call a romance. There will also eventually be some more action/adventure-like elements, but again, it's not the central focus so it's not in the genre labels I ended up going with.

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

1.

Zeref was not a normal human being.

He knew this. His classmates at school knew this, although what they knew—or thought they knew—was only a fraction of the truth.

They whispered to one another that he could do magic, and he could. Although he never advertised the fact and had no idea why they thought so or how they had found out. He'd figured out early on that this was an unusual talent and that he should be discreet when working spells, but that wasn't why he considered himself abnormal. Everyone had unique talents. His was just a bit more unique than most.

Zeref was nine when he first started dreaming of dragons. Or rather, it was only one dragon with fierce, green eyes and scales of a dark, dark crimson that reminded him of blood and ashes. When it winged down from a bleached and stormy sky to land on the mountain plateau before him, Zeref discovered that dragons were very, very large creatures indeed. The claws on the front foot closest to him were nearly as long as his forearm, and it could have eaten him in one bite without chewing. Despite this, Zeref found that he wasn't afraid, not even when the beast lowered its great head for a better look at him. Of course, this could have been because he knew this was a dream. Zeref always knew when he was dreaming.

When it spoke, its—or rather his—voice was both a deep rumble in the dragon's chest and an echo in the child's mind.

"I found you. _Finally_. It sure took long enough."

"You've been looking for me?" he asked, his own voice sounding very small and very quiet in comparison.

"Yeah, for longer than you know. How old are you right now? You look rather young to me."

It seemed like a strange question for a dream to ask, but Zeref answered anyway.

"Nine, but I'll be ten soon."

The dragon sat back on his haunches, furling and unfurling his wings in thought. He seemed... disappointed?

"Only nine, huh? Damn, I guess I'll have to wait a few years then. Unless you're really unhappy, which you don't seem to be. I assume you have a family that would panic if you went missing. Parents."

That sounded more like a statement, but the boy nodded. Would they panic if he disappeared? He supposed they probably would.

"Tell me about them," the dragon said.

"Why?"

"I want to know if they treat you well."

"Oh." Zeref considered this. It was nice of this dragon to care, even if this was only a dream. "I think they do. Or at least they try their best, but I think I confuse them."

At this, the dragon laughed.

"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me. So what are they like? What do they do for a living?"

"Mother is a doctor. She's usually very busy, but she's good at listening and she always makes time to talk to me. I'm sorry that I'm not good at talking with her."

'How so?"

"I used to tell her a lot of things, but some of what I said upset her. I don't know why, so I never know what I should or shouldn't tell her about. I don't want to make her worry."

"And your father?"

"Father writes. Articles mostly, but short stories and books too. He says you can't be picky if you want to make a living as a writer. He helps with advertisements too and informational books, but I like the ones that have magic in them the best."

The dragon hummed thoughtfully. "Magic, huh? There's a lot of magic in the world I'm from."

Zeref nodded. It made perfect sense that a dragon's world would have lots of magic in it.

"I can do magic," he admitted, looking down at the ground then back up at those sharp, intent eyes. "But as far as I know, I'm the only one. I try not to where people can see anymore because it scares them."

Even though he couldn't detect any great change in the dragon's expression, Zeref got the distinct impression that he was surprised and perhaps a bit befuddled. Although not by the magic apparently.

"Why should it scare them?"

The boy had spent some time pondering this himself over the past few years, so he was ready with an answer.

"Because they don't understand how I can do it. They think it's unnatural and evil. People are often scared of what they can't understand."

"You know, you don't really sound like you're nine."

"I know. That's why my parents worry, and why I make some people nervous. Where we used to live, some of the neighbors thought I was cursed."

For a brief second, he thought the dragon's eyes narrowed in anger, but he suppressed the emotion as quickly as it had arisen. The expression left in its wake seemed a little sad, but Zeref thought that maybe he was imagining it.

"Well, I don't think you're strange," the dragon informed him rather matter-of-factly. "And you can talk to me about anything you like."

Zeref hesitated then asked, "Do you have a name?"

"It's Natsu. Natsu Dragneal."

After that, he dreamt of dragons a lot. Sometimes, they were just dreams and the dragons were all different colors, but more often than not, it was the red dragon that he dreamed about. Those always felt the most realistic, although Zeref's dreams were usually vivid. If asked why, however, he would have been hard pressed to explain. Perhaps it was the level of detail in them, or the way a scratch mark made in the rock in one dream would still be there in the next.

Whatever the reason and regardless of why it happened, Zeref was glad for those dreams, especially as he grew older. Life when he started middle school proved much worse than life in elementary school. The other students were now just old enough to start really noticing and wondering about his strangeness and yet still too young to be accepting. Zeref was more than capable of protecting himself from potential bullies with just a tiny bit of discreet magic and he didn't care enough about his peers' opinions to be hurt by mean gossip, but his sense of not-belonging was almost unbearable. It had less to do with wanting to fit in and more to do with a feeling of displacement, like somehow, he was living in one world while everyone around him was living in another—despite the fact that they were all really in the same place.

At the same time, Zeref refused to change himself simply in order to be perceived as "normal" or "one of us". He had no need or desire for the kind of acceptance that came from pretending to be something or someone that he was not.

His dreams of the crimson dragon became his escape from everything, a place where he felt safe from all the worries and frustrations of the world in general. True to his word, Natsu listened to everything he wanted—needed—to tell _somebody_ , and more often than not, his comments made Zeref step back and rethink things in new, less suffocating ways. There was just something comforting to Zeref about the dragon's presence, something that made him feel as though everything would be—was—okay.

"Try not to let it bother you," Natsu told him. "It'll all make sense eventually. Besides, most of them will grow out of it. And the ones who don't," he shrugged, an oddly human sort of gesture, "they aren't worth bothering about."

"I suppose not."

Zeref lay on his back on the plateau with his arms folded behind his head looking up at the sky—blue tonight, and rather sunny. It would have been blinding if it weren't for the shade provided by one of the dragon's partly unfolded wings. This place was quiet, but in a peaceful sort of way with a light, clean breeze that reminded him of spring. As far as he could see, the mountainous terrain went on for leagues in all directions, fading into pale white mist in the distance.

"But what if most of them don't grow out of it? How am I going to live surrounded by people who treat me like I'm from another planet?"

"You'd manage. You have so far, right? And I know your family cares for you, and you enjoy the time you spend with them. Not everyone is lucky enough to have that." Here, the dragon paused then added, "And don't worry yourself about things that far in the future. You never know what might happen."

The boy tilted his face so he could see the dragon's head, a triangular silhouette against the blue, blue sky.

"I always feel like you know something important that you're not telling me."

"It's not that I don't want to tell you. I just feel like I shouldn't. Not yet."

"Why?"

"Because you've still got to live in that world for awhile. You can't do that if you're always dreaming of someplace else."

Zeref pondered this. "Does this place count?"

He quite literally dreamt about it almost every time he slept.

The dragon's massive bulk shifted restlessly beside him and Zeref got the strange feeling that Natsu felt guilty.

"It probably does, but I can't help it. It took me ages to find you, and I don't want to leave you alone. Okay, maybe not ages, but it still felt like a real long time. The way time gets skewed across dimensions can really mess with your sense of schedule."

"My imagination comes up with some very strange things."

For some reason, this made the dragon chuckle. He didn't comment on it though, so Zeref asked, "Where you're from, are there many dragons?"

"Not really. There used to be a long time ago, but these days, they're actually quite rare. A lot of people don't even believe they exist anymore."

"They?"

"That's right. I haven't told you. I'm not a dragon."

The child blinked and sat up, looking from the dragon's long, wickedly barbed tail to his clawed feet and wings that could have whipped up their own private hurricane.

"You look like a dragon to me."

"I am a dragon now, but that's just the shape I'm using. I'm a wizard, like you. My magic comes from dragons and it lets me take the shape of a dragon if I want to do so badly enough."

"You like being a dragon then?"

"Quite a lot, yeah. Being able to fly is a definite plus. But then... it was also the only way I had a chance of finding you, getting yourself born in another world and all."

"It was... my choice?"

"As much as it is anyone's, so no, I suppose you didn't really have much of a choice. I went around asking all these fortunetellers and clairvoyants to help me locate you. Cana turned out to be the most accurate, but she's also drunk most of the time."

"And people like having their fortunes told by a woman who is drunk?"

"Like is probably too strong a word, but she's one of the best. Assuming you want actual fortunetelling and not just fluff."

Zeref tried to imagine what sort of people might actually want to know things about their futures. He most certainly was not one of them. It sounded like Natsu lived somewhere extremely lively, but this place seemed so isolated.

"What is this place?" he wondered aloud, surveying the seemingly endless stretch of mountains once more. "It doesn't sound like the world you're from, and I know it's not mine."

Natsu followed the direction of his gaze, and Zeref wondered how much farther the dragon could see. He had no doubt that a dragon's senses would be better than those of a human being.

"I don't know. I think of it as a sort of in-between place."

"Does anything live here?"

"Why don't we look around and find out? Come on, I'll carry you."

It was the first time, although certainly not the last, that the red dragon took him flying, and it was possibly the most exhilarating thing he'd ever experienced.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **AN** : The background and setting for this story is a bit complicated, so I apologize if it's currently a bit confusing/unclear. There will be more details on the background of this story in upcoming chapters. As mentioned in the warnings above, this is partly a sort of reincarnation story, only I'm setting it across different worlds instead of the same one.

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	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **Shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

2.

Zeref woke from dreams of flying over seemingly unoccupied miles of mountain range wound through with rivers like silver ribbons and just lay for a minute, committing the details to memory before they could slip away in the way of dreams. Somehow, he never felt as strong of a sense of belonging as he did in those moments, and that made them incredibly precious. He suspected that the feeling had less to do with the surreal tranquility of the breathtaking wilderness and more to do with the dragon who claimed not to really be a dragon at all.

Zeref never told anyone about the dreams. Partly, it was because he doubted his parents or anyone else would believe him. But it was also because deep down, he felt that there was something intensely private about these dreams, something very special that he didn't want to share with anyone. Soaring high over the tranquil dreamscape with nothing but sky in all directions, it was like he and the dragon were in their own world, a world that was theirs only where no troubles could reach them. It was his secret, and that was how he wanted it to stay.

Somewhere else in the spacious apartment, Zeref could hear his parents talking, an indistinct murmur punctuated by the clink of dishes being washed and then the electric hum of the microwave.

Most of him just really wanted to go back to sleep, but he knew from past experience that this didn't guarantee he'd return to that dream. So instead, with a quiet sigh, he got up and set about preparing for school.

He and the dragon had a lot of fun in those dreams. They explored the surrounding landscape, flying farther each time and alighting to inspect anything that interested them. Zeref started to draw a map on one corner of the plateau with a fragment of white rock, marking the places that they had visited—the ones that didn't seem to move around anyway. So far, they still hadn't found any concrete signs of life, but there were places where both of them felt that something or someone else had recently passed through.

There was this strange set of small lakes formed by a number of waterfalls. The water in them was black, and it felt strangely thick and a litle warm when Zeref ran a finger through it. He would have thought it was oil if it didn't smell so clean. They discovered after awhile that sometimes, if they looked into one of the pools at just the right angle or maybe at just the right time, they could see images of places they had never been.

" _Maybe they're other worlds," Zeref suggested, watching a ship sail over a city on a cloud._

" _Huh, you might be right."_

They wondered what would happen if they jumped in, but in the end, they decided that it would be wiser not to test it out—at least for the time being. Even if the whole thing was only a single, continuous dream, it was a wonderful sort of dream and Zeref didn't want to go accidentally changing it.

.

Zeref was twelve when Natsu proved that he really was—or could be—a human. The dark-haired boy had fallen into bed after a long day of exams, completely exhausted and more than a bit stressed—although not because of the exams.

The incident had happened just before dinner. His mother had decided that, since she'd left the hospital early for once, she'd cook instead of ordering out like they usually did. Partway through, a member of the hospital staff had called her with urgent queries about one of her patients. She hadn't said as much, but Zeref figured she must have gotten caught up in the call. Her shriek and the smell of smoke brought him running from his room where he was just dropping off his schoolbooks. He'd taken in the situation at a glance—the thick smoke billowing up from the pot on the stove, the flicker of flames, his mother with her cell phone still in her hand, the ladle on the floor—and reacted without thinking.

A quick spell put out the fire as he hurried to open the window. Once that was done, he used another spell to invite a breeze through to circulate the kitchen, effectively taking away most of the acrid smoke and stench. The second task took a lot more concentration, so it was a moment before he realized that his mother was staring at him.

She hadn't said anything to him, just proceeded to clean up the remainder of the mess and call to order takeout after all, and Zeref had returned to his room. Back when his parents had first found out about his strange talent, they had told him in no uncertain terms not to do "whatever it was" he did again; they refused to call it magic. His parents were too scientifically-minded to believe that "whatever it was" meant he consorted with the Devil or something like some of his more religious classmates seemed to think, but it still made them uneasy. Especially because it was something they couldn't explain despite all their knowledge and expertise.

On almost every other subject, his parents were uncommonly lenient, perhaps because he never gave them reason to doubt his sense of responsibility, but not about this.

So it was that when he was finally able to retreat to the solitude of his room and the quiet under his covers, all he really wanted was to forget about the day for awhile.

Zeref was surprised to find the dragon already on the plateau, and even more surprised at the clear annoyance in his posture. When Natsu noticed him, he stopped grumbling to himself and turned his head to look at him.

Zeref approached a little cautiously and asked, "Why are you upset?"

The dragon heaved a sigh, and the hot air ruffled his hair. "They keep telling me that I shouldn't be selfish."

"Who?"

"Erza, Gray, Lucy, everyone except Jellal," Natsu said, sounding rather grumpy. "I don't think I'm being selfish. I mean, you're happy when I visit you, right?"

"Very."

"See? In fact, I think I'm being really patient. I could have just kidnapped you years ago. If your family hadn't been good to you, I probably would have."

Zeref wasn't sure what to make of this, so he filed it away as one of those inexplicable remarks Natsu made at times.

Abruptly, Natsu brightened. "I almost forgot. Here, I brought you a present. I think I'm really getting the hang of this world traveling thing."

He nudged a dark brown box towards the boy with his tail and waited expectantly.

Zeref bent to pick up the package then walked over to sit against the dragon's right foreleg. It looked like the kind of box snacks got sold in on special occasions with gold edging and faint, pattern impressions in its surface. He brushed his fingers lightly across them, trying to figure out the design.

"Are these magnolia flowers?"

The dragon craned his head around to see. "Are they? I have no idea. I don't know much about flowers. It would make sense though. The city I live in is called Magnolia, and this was from the last festival we had."

"My parents both really like gardening," Zeref told him while he opened the box. "That was why they took so long to make up their minds about moving to the city even though the work they could find here was better. We have a lot of plants in pots on the balcony, but it's not the same. I suppose they moved for my sake mostly. The people in the countryside where we lived were more superstitious and didn't like me very much. I didn't like it when people got too close to me either, and I don't think that helped. It's an un-endearing trait in a child... Are these rice cakes?"

"That's right. And they're the best in Magnolia. The city council made a deal with this snack shop that's been crazy popular lately, and they put together two new products for the festival. The other one was chocolate. I would have brought some of that too, but it would probably have all melted with how long the flight is to get here. I am a Fire Dragon after all."

Zeref tilted his head back to smile up at him.

"Thank you."

Was it strange to feel happy about receiving a present in a dream? Oh well, it was still a better way to end the day than that awkward and silent dinner.

And Natsu was right. The rice cakes were good, although Zeref had to admit that he didn't have many experiences to compare them to. His parents didn't really approve of sweets.

"I'm glad you like them. They do smell good."

This last bit was spoken rather wistfully, so Zeref offered him the box.

"You can have some. I don't mind."

"Thanks, but they're so tiny I doubt I'd even be able to taste them." The dragon sighed then seemed to remember something and perked up. "Or actually, I guess this is as good a time as any. I've been practicing, although I can still only get it to last for about ten minutes."

That said, Natsu stood up and moved a few dragon-sized paces away from him. While Zeref watched with open curiosity, the dragon stood very still with his eyes narrowed in concentration, and then suddenly, there was no dragon on the plateau anymore.

Zeref blinked, startled by the sudden change and the strange, responding sense of déjà vu that assailed him. The young man who now stood where the dragon had been was lean and muscular with wild hair and slitted green eyes bright with mischief and triumph. When he grinned, Zeref saw that he still had fangs too. All in all, he decided that Natsu looked like the kind of boy his parents would have told him to stay away from, someone who probably got into more fights than he should and didn't always do his homework. But there was something else about him too, a quality that felt fierce and confident and honest, and Zeref found that he liked him immediately.

Of course, that was largely because he felt very much the same as the dragon he had been, meaning that he somehow managed to be exactly what Zeref would have expected had he given any thought to what the dragon might have looked like as a human being.

Odd though. For some reason, Zeref had the niggling feeling that he had seen him before somewhere. Oh well, it could be a dream thing. It shouldn't surprise him that his own dreams would feel familiar to him, right?

"It worked!" Natsu cheered.

This was, apparently, a great achievement.

He sat down next to Zeref and cheerfully appropriated one of the small, round rice cakes.

"What did you mean when you said it only lasts ten minutes?" Zeref asked.

"Exactly what it sounds like really. I can manage to stay human for about ten minutes before I have to turn back. If I don't turn back, this place kicks me out."

Zeref frowned, glancing around at the seemingly innocuous landscape.

"You mean, this place makes you leave?"

"Yeah, you could say that." Natsu took a large bite of the rice cake and chewed on it while he thought about how to explain. "I'm not really sure why it happens. I think it has something to do with how dragons are naturally more resistant to magic. This place has a lot of magic in it, and it takes a lot of magic and a certain kind of presence to stop it from throwing you out."

The dark-haired boy considered this for a moment then said, "But I don't have trouble staying here and I'm human."

Natsu's expression became distinctly amused.

"I think you'll find that you've got plenty of magic yourself. Besides, I'm not sure how much of you is actually here. I mean, your parents haven't freaked out about you disappearing in the middle of the night, have they?"

"I don't believe so. But then I don't think they make a habit of checking on me while I'm sleeping."

This made Zeref think back to earlier that evening again. He put the rice cake he'd just picked up back in the box, suddenly not inclined to eat anymore.

"Is something wrong?" Natsu asked.

Zeref shook his head. He didn't really want to think or talk about it. It wasn't like it was anything new.

"Could you tell me more about what wizards are like in your world?" he asked instead, changing the subject. "What do they do?"

Natsu studied his face for a moment, obviously not convinced, but he didn't press the issue. Instead, he told him about wizard guilds, magic classes that some other wizard was giving, and some of the jobs that he'd done. Listening to him, Zeref allowed himself to wonder just for a little while what it might be like to live in such a world. He wondered, also, what it might be like to be able to talk to Natsu whenever he wanted instead of only in the few hours each night when he slept.

Sometimes, it was a relief to let himself daydream for awhile. His father like to say that all great ideas started as dreams.

When Zeref opened his eyes the next morning and sat up with a stifled yawn, he discovered a half eaten box of rice cakes on the bed next to him. He stared at it in shock for a moment before picking it up and inspecting it. It was definitely the same one. He set it down with care on the corner of his desk, his heart suddenly beating very fast. Had his desire for those dreams to be real been so strong that he had somehow used magic to recreate Natsu's present? But he'd never been able to do anything like that before. Whatever anyone else thought, magic was a sort of science. You couldn't just make something out of nothing.

But if he hadn't created it, then... his dreams really weren't just dreams after all. If that was true, what did it all mean?

.

It was the first day of summer break and Zeref had planned to spend it at home working out the details of the last spell he had been developing, but after last night's dinner, he thought it would be prudent to go to the library instead. Part of him felt guilty for pursuing research on magic when his parents were so against it, but he couldn't help it. Magic fascinated him, and it was too major a part of him for him to simply ignore it.

Then there were his dreams to consider too.

Barricaded behind several piles of books at a quiet table hidden by several bookshelves, he spent an hour trying to replicate the box of rice cakes, which he had snuck in with him. True to his original assumption, the endeavor proved impossible. Replacing the box in the book bag by his feet, he sat back in his chair and frowned. He stared at the names on the spines of the books in front of him, not really seeing them. In his mind, he carefully went back through the things that Natsu had told him over the years. They had had so many conversations, and it was hard now to remember exactly what he had said in them, but a few phrases here and there stood out. Slowly, he unpacked a notebook and a pen then began to write down everything he could recall.

"This isn't really a dream, is it?" he said to Natsu next time he saw the red dragon. "Or not a dream like we normally think of dreams. Somehow, this is all really happening somewhere. You really are from another world, but somehow, you knew who I was even before we met. How is all this possible?"

"You can use magic in a world that doesn't seem to have any other wizards in it, and you're asking me how this is possible?" the other wizard asked, amused.

"Natsu, this has really been bothering me."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry." Natsu sobered and settled down beside him. He seemed suddenly so grim that Zeref wondered if he shouldn't have asked about this after all. Was there some great and terrible reason behind what was happening?

"I... don't think I'm supposed to tell you," the dragon said finally, turning to fix him with an intent, green gaze that seemed to be searching his soul. "I'm sure everyone else would say I shouldn't, and you are still a bit young. But... I'm sure you'd figure things out on your own eventually. They don't know you like I do. So listen carefully and don't interrupt, okay? It's not a subject I like to talk about."

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

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	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **Shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

3.

"I knew who you were because it wasn't the first time we'd met, or it was but it also sort of wasn't." Natsu sighed and grumbled a bit about how finding the right words was way harder than it ought to be. "I'm not clear on the details myself, but I supposed the gist of it is that people's souls don't die when their bodies do. Sometimes, they move on to who knows where. Sometimes, they hang around as ghosts. And sometimes, they get reborn. It sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but I knew you before you were born in the world you're in now."

He paused for a moment to let the boy digest this information. Zeref wasn't really that surprised. He'd come to a similar conclusion after sorting through the bits and pieces of information scattered throughout their long association with one another.

"You were... very important to me," the dragon continued then paused again as though considering what to include and what to omit.

"I've told you about the guild and how we get into a lot of dangerous business with Dark Guilds?"

Zeref nodded.

"Well, some of it got really serious at times, but we always made it through okay. People got hurt and things got destroyed, but people heal and places can be rebuilt. Maybe we got too used to things always working out in the end. Maybe we got complacent, I don't know. Maybe I just don't want to believe that what happened was inevitable. I never did care for the whole fate idea. That was really more your thing."

Fate. Huh, Zeref really hadn't given the concept much thought up to this point. Although from their previous conversations, he had to admit that he was probably more inclined to be fatalistic than Natsu.

"At first, we thought it was more or less the usual, you know, a bunch of dark wizards with too much power and not enough sense. But there were so many of them. Hell, I'd guess practically all the Dark Guilds left were involved in one way or another. They tried to rewrite history and everything was falling apart—space and time and that sort of thing. You ever seen a whole city just crumble into dust? Whole villages would shift places during the night or disappear entirely. No one got much sleep because we never knew who was still going to be there when we woke up. It got pretty bad, especially with how powerful many of their leaders were, but we—us and some of our friends—managed to stop them and you put the world back together the right way. Only... you died doing it."

The dragon's tail lashed in agitation.

"I was angry with you for running off and dying on me. I was the one who found you, but you were so far gone by then that I don't think you even recognized me. It was horrible, although I'm still glad it was me and not somebody else. And the last thing you said to me was—" _tell Natsu I'm sorry. I'll be back, I promise. Look for me_ "..."

Zeref was no longer looking at the landscape of mountains around them. Instead, his gaze had turned inward. He was trying to picture the events as Natsu described them, trying to imagine what it would feel like to live in a world that was so unstable, a world where the very fabric of time and space was unraveling. Even though Natsu left out a lot of details, Zeref found his own mind filling them in—terrified people traveling in groups along crowded roads, trying to find somewhere that wasn't being affected by the magic. Except that there was no such place, not with a spell of such magnitude. He could taste the acrid bitterness of their fear in his mouth, and it made him feel sick. His heart ached with a sadness so intense that he supposed it should probably be called grief. Had he really felt all this back then? The feelings felt like his, but also like he'd dreamed them or experienced them a long, long time ago.

"It wasn't supposed to happen. You were practically the most powerful wizard who ever lived. I was so angry with myself for letting it happen, and maybe a little upset with you too. Your will to live was always a bit weak, and I can't help but wonder if things would have gone differently if we'd met a bit earlier and had more time."

"No matter how powerful a wizard is, there will alwahs be a more powerful force out there somewhere."

"Yeah, that sounds like something you'd say."

For a long time after that, neither of them spoke, each lost in his own thoughts. There was still a great deal that had not been said, but it was enough to be getting along with. Certainly more than enough to think about for awhile.

Then Zeref asked, "So what now?"

"Now, you know that you've eventually got a few different choices," Natsu said, quiet and serious. "You can stay here, go on living the life you have right now, or you could come with me and stay in my world. Or maybe we could travel. No one said it has to be one or the other. You don't have to decide now. In fact, you probably shouldn't decide until you've at least graduated from that school you told me about. You can give me an answer then."

"And you? What would all that mean for you?"

The dragon was silent for so long that Zeref thought he wasn't going to answer.

Then he said simply, "I don't know. I suppose it'll depend."

And the statement sounded both pensive and maybe a little sad.

Zeref's own mood turned melancholy in response, and he turned his head to rest his cheek against warm—almost hot—armor-like scales.

.

Part of Natsu didn't want to remember the details of that day that felt like an eternity ago even though it had been much more recent than that, but another part of him didn't want to let it go—couldn't bear the thought of forgetting even one small detail. It had been the single worst day of his entire life, and even though there wasn't really anything he could have done differently and it wasn't his fault, he couldn't help but feel as though that day had been a monumental failure. The one time he had utterly failed to protect something precious to him, and the one time things had not worked out right in the end.

Victory had never tasted so bitter.

He had cremated the body before anyone else could find them. He hadn't been able to stand the thought of anyone else seeing the other boy that way, and besides, there were probably plenty of dark wizards who would love to get their hands on the remains. Then the Dragon Slayer had walked off into the woods and kept on walking until he felt able to go back and deal with people again without hurting anyone or destroying anything. It was the first time he'd ever seen someone close to him die right in front of his eyes, and it had hurt a lot more than he'd imagined because he had never _let_ himself imagine it before.

It didn't help that it had been the one person in the world he thought he'd never have to worry about losing.

He hadn't paid much attention to the aftermath of the incident. Those main culprits who hadn't died during the event had been placed in prison; if any of them had appeared before him then, Natsu was sure he would have killed them, and he wasn't at all sure that he wouldn't have burned the world to ashes to do it.

For awhile, he couldn't listen to anyone talk about "Zeref" or "the Black Wizard". Mostly, it was because so much of it was bad. The dark wizard had spent most of his life in hiding. All most people would ever know about him were old rumors and imagined tales of black magic and curses and death. People would continue to blame him for all the terrible things that had happened in history, whether he had actually been involved or not. Such talk had always annoyed Natsu to some extent after he'd gotten to know the Black Wizard himself, but Zeref had stopped caring a long time ago and his indifference made it easy for Natsu to ignore the poisonous words and hateful speculations. Now that he was gone, such talk tended to provoke some borderline murderous feelings in the Dragon Slayer. He had had to take a break from any Dark Guild related jobs after very nearly massacring the last one to cross his path.

It was Gajeel who tentatively brought up the idea of reincarnation, probably prompted by Levy. The Rune Wizard exerted a lot of influence these days over her husband, and she was more likely to have thought of this explanation for Zeref's parting words to him than the other Dragon Slayer. In addition to that, it was possible that Gajeel sympathized since Levy had been one of the people to temporarily disappear as a result of the time distortion.

Natsu hadn't known what to make of the idea, to be honest. It would fit the words, but he wasn't quite sure he believed it could happen and he didn't know how he'd find him if it did or how similar or different his partner would be. But in the end, he'd set aside his doubts and decided to just believe that Zeref had known what he was talking about because he usually did and was almost never wrong.

" _Look for me_ ," his partner had said.

And so Natsu had looked. He'd looked everywhere he could, searched every corner of the kingdom and then the other kingdoms of Earth Land. And when that hadn't worked, he looked farther, made a trip to Edolas and learned everything he could about other dimensions and other worlds. His friends helped where they could, glad that he had something more constructive to pour his excessive energy and determination into. No one dared suggest to him that it was futile, trying to find one person in all the possible universes out there. Zeref had always had faith in him, a strong and unshakable faith that Natsu had sometimes wondered about but always treasured, and Natsu refused to give up.

And unlike his search for his adopted father, his search for his partner had paid off.

"Some of my friends said that maybe this," he flicked the tip of his tail to indicate the both of them, "might have been a good thing. You're getting a chance to live a normal childhood, more or less. A chance to start over without all that history that you could never quite leave behind."

Natsu could see the logic in this suggestion now, but he had sent the first person to suggest such a thing to him to the hospital. He probably owed that person an apology, but he'd been in such a blind rage at the implication that Zeref's death could have been desirable in any way that he couldn't remember who it had been anymore.

"There used to always be this shadow in your eyes even when you were happy, like happiness was something you didn't feel you could allow yourself."

You couldn't really fix a person, not completely. Not when the wounds ran that deep, and perhaps especially not when he'd really been breaking from the inside out and not the outside in. Nothing could destroy a person as thoroughly as self loathing. You could put the pieces together, but there would always be scars.

"That isn't there anymore, and I'm glad for that at least. You smile and laugh a lot more easily too. But at the same time..."

At the same time, Natsu couldn't help feeling like he'd let him down back then. It didn't matter that it wasn't his fault or that Zeref himself would have disagreed. It didn't matter that nobody thought anyone could have saved him, not even the one healer they had. When Natsu thought about that day, he still felt an almost overwhelming sense of guilt and loss.

The dragon turned his head to look at the boy when he stood up and made his way around in front of him. The child didn't say anything, just put his arms as far as they would go around the dragon's neck—which wasn't really far at all—and turned his face into his chest. No words came from the boy, but the gesture spoke of understanding and Natsu thought that Zeref had always had a wise soul—always been the kind of person who listened and thought and understood. Natsu badly wanted to hold him, but Zeref was still so young—too young—and the Dragon Slayer was afraid that he might do something he shouldn't if he let himself do even that much. So instead of transforming, he folded his wings forward to shield out the rest of the world, to keep at bay anything and everything that might harm this tiny, fragile creature that was an ordinary, human child. And he swore to himself silently that this time... this time, he wouldn't let anything take him away.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **Shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

4.

That conversation, strange and painful though it was, marked a turning point in their lives. One for the better.

Zeref found himself looking at everything through new eyes. He had never really thought before what it meant to have a normal life—more or less—and he found himself viewing it with new appreciation. He concentrated on his studies and no longer thought at all about fitting or not fitting in. He excelled in all his classes and ignored the looks he got of admiration or envy or outright dislike.

He felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and his time with the red dragon gained a new significance now that he knew for sure it was more than a long and unusual dream. More than anything, he felt free to be happy there. Free to yearn for his company. Free to feel pleased when Natsu brought him gifts, and free to miss him when his mind wandered during class. It was a relief to know that the person he had grown so attached to was more than just a figment of his imagination.

Zeref hadn't realized until then how much that had been worrying him, somewhere in the back of his mind where he put things he didn't want to think about. Daydreaming about an imaginary person in the hopes of someone coming along one day who fit the description was one thing. That was normal. Treating the daydream itself as a real person was something else entirely, and maybe even a bit insane. It was good to know that he wasn't going crazy.

Natsu, too, seemed to relax, and he spoke more often and less carefully about his life and the world he was from. The only thing he wouldn't tell Zeref about was the dark-haired boy himself. For the most part, Zeref didn't mnind that. He had the strange feeling that he was better off not knowing, and anyway, it wouldn't change who he was right now. What he did want to know that Natsu wouldn't explain to him was who exactly they had been to each other.

All the dragon would say was, " _You're very important to me_."

And Zeref had to be content with that. He wasn't really, but he decided he'd better try to be when he overheard the dragon grumbling a little worriedly to himself that he was probably influencing Zeref more than he should. All of this was more complicated and difficult for Natsu than it was for him, and Zeref didn't want to make it even more complicated and difficult by getting upset.

Everything would fall into place eventually.

During Zeref's thirteenth summer, they met their first resident monster. It was twice the size of the elephant Zeref had once seen at a zoo, and its entire body was covered in thick plates of rocky shell that glittered like unpolished quartz. It lunged up out of the glittering gray sand of the petrified forest they had been exploring, its vast jaws snapping at the air where they had been a split second before. From the shelter of a rocky tree trunk where Natsu had shoved him, the boy had just enough time to observe that the creature's general shape was like a cross between a seal and a shark before it dove back into the sand, its movements as easy as though the sand was water.

"Stay there," Natsu called over to him, running forward himself. "It's coming back."

There was a burst of fire as Natsu transformed back into the dragon shape that he had shed momentarily in the interest of not knocking down the forest while they explored it.

The shark beast leapt up in a spray of sand, letting out a hollow, shrieking cry that echoed harshly in the unnatural silence.

It was an exceedingly eerie sound, and Zeref wondered if it had friends that it was calling.

The dragon's head snapped forward like a striking snake as the creature sprang for them again, his massive jaws closing on the creature's neck with enough force to shatter its armor entirely. Its angry screech changed to one of pain and then ended abruptly as Natsu broke its neck with a violent shake of his head. The monster went limp and the dragon let it drop from his jaws, which were now stained with silver blood.

"Did you have to kill it?" Zeref asked. The sight of the creature lying dead on the bloodstained sand upset him a little. Their actions had been self defense, but it was sad to think that if they hadn't come here today and it hadn't attacked them, it would still be alive.

"I wasn't originally planning to," Natsu said, "but it tasted kind of good and I'm hungry."

"Oh." Some of the knots in Zeref's stomach loosened. "I guess that's okay then. At least we won't be wasting its life."

The dragon glanced at him, and the look in his eyes was both amused and affectionate. Then he returned his attention to roasting the creature he had just slain with a few careful blasts of fire before starting to devour it.

Zeref sat down in the sand to examine a fragment of the creature's shattered shell while he watched the dragon eat. The way he tore into the carcass and the blood about his jaws made him look feral, and Zeref was reminded sharply of the fact that dragons were predators who needed a lot of food and occupied the top of their respective food chains. He wondered why it had never occurred to him to be afraid or nervous. Even now, despite knowing this wasn't just a dream and having just seen a creature the size of two elephants reduced to shell and bone, he nonetheless felt certain that Natsu would never hurt him intentionally.

This certainty, however reasonable or not, made the dragon's presence a source of security.

The shell fragment, Zeref decided, was really rather pretty—silvery and slightly translucent. It looked like a cross between misty glass and crystal, and it was very light despite its obvious strength.

"I wonder what it normally ate?" he mused aloud, pocketing the shell fragment just in case he was able to take it home with him.

Natsu considered the question, crunching through bones for their marrows. "Good question. It couldn't possibly just live off the occasional unwary, inter-world traveler."

"Do you smell anything?"

The dragon paused in his meal and inhaled deeply.

"There are traces, but no more than in some of the other places we've visited. It's like there might have been someone here, but not for very long and not very... hmmm, solidly? Kind of like the smell of smoke you get after a fire."

Zeref nodded slowly, stood up, and began to investigate the area under the dragon's watchful gaze. He was thinking again of that comment Natsu had made once, about not being sure how much of him was actually here.

"I come here when I fall asleep," he said. "Do you think that maybe some other people do too?"

"And these creatures," Natsu tapped the shark's broken skeleton with one claw, "eat them?"

"Maybe."

After all, they probably weren't able to use magic, nor were they likely to have a dragon protecting them.

The idea had merit, but it was a little disturbing too. Zeref wondered what happened to a person who got eaten here while dreaming—assuming he was right.

"Well, we can keep an eye out just in case," Natsu said, rising to his feet. "But for now, let's go back to the plateau before something else attacks us. I'm too full to eat a second one."

.

Zeref woke to his father shaking him.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

His father raised his eyebrows and frowned at him. Tomi Dayshara was not an especially tall man, although he wasn't short either. The one thing about him that people tended to remember were his eyes, which were a strangely pale shade of green under his dark hair. They were good eyes for inspecting people and looking through them.

"I should be the one asking that. It's unlike you to still be asleep at this hour."

At this hour? Zeref glanced at the digital clock on his desk and started. It was almost noon! Good thing it was the weekend.

"Are you catching a cold? I checked and you don't seem to have a fever."

"I was just tired," Zeref told him. "Don't worry about it."

His father nodded but didn't leave the room.

Zeref looked up at him uneasily, wondering if he suspected anything strange. After all, Natsu had hinted that there might be signs in this world of his time spent in that in-between place. Although if he had been fading out or something, he assumed his father should be looking at him with more concern. Rather, his expression seemed bemused and curious.

"I noticed that you've been writing something," his father said finally, gesturing towards the desk.

Zeref glanced over and realized that he'd left one of his notebooks open. Oh, that's right. He'd been writing down... writing down some of his dreams...

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry, but I saw the word "dragon" and I've been thinking about writing about dragons. It's quite interesting. I didn't know you were interested in writing stories."

Zeref relaxed. He should have expected his father to assume that something with dragons in it would be fictional.

"It's just something that's been on my mind," he said. It wasn't a lie. He'd never been very good at lying anyway.

"Would it be okay with you if I read more of it? I've only seen the page you've got there."

"Um, I'm... not sure I'm comfortable with you reading it..."

His father sounded amused when he replied, "Well, okay then. But you know, if you want to be a writer, you're going to have to let someone else read your work eventually. And I'm always here if you need help."

"I know. Maybe... maybe when I've written more of it."

His father nodded. "All right. You'd better get ready. We're supposed to meet up with your mother for lunch."

After he left, Zeref remained sitting on the bed for awhile, thinking. Would it be so bad to let his parents read what he wrote about his dreams? As long as they didn't know it wasn't fictional, it could be a good way of letting them get familiar with information that they might need to know eventually. And he could just leave out anything that might really disturb them, like talk of past deaths.

Still turning this idea over in his mind, he got up and headed for the dresser to pick out something to wear for the day. His mother could be very particular about how they all dressed when they went out.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

5.

They found the footprints on their third trip to the petrified forest. They were very peculiar footprints, starting out as barely visible, shallow indents in the sand and gradually becoming deeper and more well defined. For a good hundred yards or so, the footprints looked practically normal. They could even make out the ridges from their rubber soles. But after that hundred yards, the footprints became shallower and shallower once more, until they vanished entirely as though the person who had left them had walked off up into the sky.

"It seems to support your suggestion," Natsu observed. "The scent too. It just sort of starts with the footprints and stops when they stop."

Zeref knelt to examine the footprints. The silver-gray sand, although heavier and less prone to drift than normal sand, was not ideal for retaining details. He could be sure the shoes hadn't been high heels at least, and probably not boots either. Sneakers maybe?

"We can stick around and watch if you're curious," Natsu said.

Zeref hesitated. He was curious, but, "I'd... really rather go flying, if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't mind."

The dragon gripped the back of the boy's clothes very carefully with his teeth and lifted him onto his back. It was a good thing that these clothes were extremely resilient and only worn in these dreams. Zeref's parents would probably have been quite concerned to find gashes from impossibly large fangs in his pajamas. The boy laughed to himself at the thought and then had to save his breath for holding on as the dragon leapt skyward. Neither of them wanted to test what might happen should Zeref fall off.

Yet even though they weren't looking, they found something while gliding above one of the realm's many rivers.

What they found was a bridge that they hadn't seen before, made of the same, gray and brown rock that made up the two shores it connected as though it had grown out of the ground itself. It was the first artificial structure that they had come across thus far, and as Natsu circled above it, they both spotted the suggestion of movement upon it. Before their fascinated and astonished eyes, a woman faded into view walking across it. She was reading a book and they could see the bridge railings on the other side of her through her transparent figure. Before she reached the end of the bridge, another figure—this one a man—became visible walking the other way. He yawned as he walked and lifted a hand to cover his mouth. The two people passed one another without so much as a glance as though they each thought they were the only ones on the bridge, and by the time each had reached the opposite side, they were gone.

"They were dressed kind of funny," Natsu remarked, still circling over the bridge and eyeing it intently.

"Really? They're dressed pretty much like most people where I'm from," Zeref said, peering down at yet another ghost. "I wonder if anyone I know comes here."

"Would you want them to?"

Zeref didn't answer right away. Over the years, he had come to think of this place as their place, and the thought of sharing it with anyone else rankled a little. Still, if other people did find themselves here sometimes, it might help to bridge the disconnect between himself and most other people. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to bridge that gap anymore. He wasn't unhappy, although he supposed it would be nice to be understood.

"I don't know," he said finally. "I guess it doesn't really matter. It doesn't have anything to do with us."

But it did. Or at least, it would. Not soon, not for a few years yet, but eventually.

Just not in any way they had foreseen.

.

When Zeref was fourteen, almost fifteen, a few of his classmates scraped up the courage to ask him for a favor two months after the start of the school year. Perhaps it had something to do with entering high school and the emphasis their campus placed on club activities.

"They want me to teach them magic," he told Natsu.

The two of them sat on the sand beside a vast lake with water so clear they could see straight down to the bottom. It emphasized the fact that the lake was entirely devoid of life, which made the place a little eerie, but it was still a beautiful sight.

"I don't know if I can, and I'm not sure if I should."

"Well," Natsu said, "magic can do a lot of great things for people, but it's only a tool. People can do a lot of bad things with it too. I suppose you'd have to consider what it might mean to introduce it into a world where so few people know anything about it."

Zeref hunched his shoulders, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. "I don't want to be the one who makes that decision."

"Maybe not, but it seems to me like you don't have much of a choice here." The dragon paused, considering. "So how many of them are there?"

"Five. Three boys, two girls."

"Does one of the girls have insanely long, wavy blond hair?"

Zeref blinked and sat up straight to look up at him.

"How did you know?"

"Call it a hunch." Something about this seemed to amuse the dragon greatly, but all he said was, "So what are they like? Do you think they're good people?"

"I don't know. They're not bad people, I suppose I can say that much. But who is to say that they will not become bad people?"

"Maybe you should talk to them and try to get to know them before you decide. Ask them why they want to learn magic, see what they want to do with it and how likely they are to stick to what they say."

"I'm not sure I'm that good at judging what people are like."

"You might be surprised at what you can learn just by watching people and paying attention."

Zeref sighed at that. "What I've learned from watching people is that people can be very strange and often do not make a lot of sense."

"Can't argue with you there," Natsu said, laughing. "But you know, sometimes with people, you just have to make a decision and have faith that things will go well. If things don't go well, you can deal with them then."

He stood up and shook the sand from his scales. Zeref interpreted this as a sign that the night was drawing to a close and it was almost time for him to wake up. A little reluctantly, he stood up as well

"Let me know how it goes," the dragon said.

"I will."

Natsu unfolded his wings then paused.

"Just one more thing before I go."

Zeref started to ask what that was, but suddenly, it was the young man he had seen a handful of times before standing with him on the lake shore instead of the dragon. Said young man closed the distance between them in a few quick strides, hesitated for a moment as he studied his face, then leaned down and kissed Zeref on the lips.

The boy was too startled to move.

Then Natsu pulled away and said, "Fore luck," with a grin. And he was gone, leaving Zeref to wake up in his own room feeling very strange and confused about the fluttery sensation in his stomach. It felt rather a lot like severe anxiety, although a little like happiness too. Whatever else, it was unfamiliar.

Dawn had been some time ago, and despite the closed window blinds, his room was quite bright. Zeref stared at the thin lines of sunlight that fell across the pale wood surface of his desk.

He should be getting ready for breakfast. School was in half an hour. He had to give his classmates an answer to their request.

All the same, Zeref stayed sitting on his bed with the covers pulled up about himself for warmth until his concerned mother arrived to see what was keeping him.

.

Zeref took his friend's advice and started spending time with the five classmates that had approached him. It wasn't quite as difficult as he had feared, although he couldn't decide what he thought of their company.

The girl with the long, wavy hair that Natsu had referred to was definitely the most exuberant and outgoing of the group, followed closely by one of the boys who seemed to have more energy than he knew what to do with. The two of them chatted constantly and argued on occasion, but for the most part, Zeref pegged them as cheerful individuals. The other girl was more reserved and seemed the most uncertain about this entire venture. Even though she never said so directly, Zeref felt that she was really only going along with her best friend's slightly crazy if intriguing idea. Then there was the somewhat stocky boy who always seemed to be helping out this friend or that one, but in a quiet and unassuming sort of way. He was good at listening and often helped to mediate the disputes that arose amongst his peers.

"He likes to garden," Zeref told Natsu, recounting the events of last weekend when they had all gone on a picnic at the park. "I think he and my parents would have a lot to say to one another. He recommended a type of potted plant that I can get for my parents that will be easy to care for and survive well on an apartment balcony. I think I kind of like the idea of bonsai trees myself. They're these miniature, decorative trees that people grow, and they seem convenient for small spaces."

"Miniature trees?" Natsu repeated, trying to imagine what these would be like as house decorations. "Sounds interesting, but I'm not really a gardening person. The last time someone gave me a houseplant, it died within a week."

Zeref laughed. "That can happen even when you like plants. I can't say I'm all that good at keeping plants alive myself. I do the right things, according to my parents. I water them correctly and on time every day, but somehow, they always end up dying. That's why Mother and Father look after the plants in our apartment. I'm starting to think that something about my aura just doesn't sit well with shrubs and flowers."

"Maybe. You never know."

Zeref glanced up from the Earth Land atlas Natsu had brought him to look at the dragon. This was one of those moments when Natsu seemed to know something Zeref didn't, and whatever he knew made him a little sad.

The dragon shook off the strange mood, however, and changed the subject. "What about the fifth person? The last one's a boy too, right?"

"That's right." Zeref nodded and went back to talking while he studied a map of the region around Magnolia City. "I'm... not sure about him. He's hard for me to understand. He's on the quiet side too, and very serious."

"You agreed to join the club then."

"I..." Zeref started then trailed off. "I did. Do you think that was the right choice?"

"You must have thought it was a workable idea to some extent or you wouldn't have joined," Natsu pointed out. "Why the doubts now?"

Zeref shut the atlas and pushed himself up into a sitting position from where he had been lying on his stomach beneath the shelter of the dragon's right wing. From this position, it was easier for him to look up into the dragon's slanted eyes.

"I don't know. They seem harmless enough. Most of them have big dreams for the future about helping people and also making money with a whole new brand of products and services. They've started working a lot with illusions, and also how to rejuvenate dead plants or repair broken electronics. They're all pretty talented at magic in their own way, but one of them in particular, the really serious one... He picked everything up much faster than the others, and he seems to be getting more and more interested in what I can do myself. That... makes me uncomfortable. I wish he would just focus on developing his own magic and stop asking me questions about mine."

The dragon's eyes narrowed at this, and Zeref wondered if he was imagining the low growl that rumbled in his throat.

"Keep your distance from that one," Natsu said firmly. "And let me know if he tries any funny business. Second chances are great and all, but you still need to watch out for these things."

That last bit hadn't made any sense to Zeref, but he trusted Natsu's judgment and so he simply made a note of his advice and added the rest to his mental list of inexplicable remarks.

.

Riana and Tomi Dayshara were worried about their son. He had always been an unusual child, extremely bright but given over to strange ideas and philosophies far beyond his years, and of course, there were the strange things that he could do which he told them quite solemnly at the age of seven was "magic".

" _There's no such thing as magic, dear_ ," they had told him. " _There has to be another explanation_."

Except that, try as they might, they couldn't find another explanation, and their son remained quiet on the subject and let them believe what they wanted—which was more than a little disconcerting in its own way.

They had thought, as Zeref had gotten older and stopped talking about such things as magic, that he'd grown out of it and would hopefully find some more normal hobbies and start interacting more with his peers. For awhile, it had even appeared as though their hopes were coming true. Their son still spent a lot of time alone in his room or at the library, but he joined a school club too and occasionally helped out with school events when one of his classmates bothered to ask him. He even started writing stories like his father.

But... But there were a few things that just didn't make sense. Odd things here and there that they couldn't explain.

For instance, there was the sand. Riana had gone into her son's room to collect the bed sheets to be washed, and she had found a small quantity of sand in them. And what strange sand it was too, silvery and unusually heavy. She'd put the sand in a bottle and gone to see a college friend of hers who studied rocks and minerals, but changed her mind before actually showing him the sand. Some sixth sense told her that he wouldn't be able to tell her anything about it. Instead, she brought the bottle back home and gave it to her husband so that it could be his problem too and not just hers.

" _For some reason, it seems kind of familiar_ ," Tomi had told her, holding the bottle up to the light so that the silver-gray sand within sparkled and glittered. " _I can't for the life of me say why though. I'm sure I've never seen anything like_ it."

After that, the two of them became more vigilant. They respected their son's privacy and weren't given to looking through his things without his permission, but they didn't have to. Once they started paying attention, they found signs everywhere.

There were books scattered across his bookshelf which they had never heard of and couldn't find online. One or two of them even seemed to be written in another language, although they didn't actually open them to make sure. There was the shallow, oblong box on their son's desk which he was using to hold such things as paperclips and pens, very neatly made and resembling the boxes that chocolate and cookies got sold in on special occasions—only of a brand that no stores seemed to carry.

Their most recent discovery was a small sliver of what seemed to be crystal. It had been caught in the pocket of their son's pajamas and then come loose when Riana threw the laundry into the washer. They thought it was a crystal anyway, although like the sand hadn't been quite like any sand they had seen before, it wasn't quite like any crystal they had ever laid eyes on. It was just some fragment of another stone, and—after examining it—Tomi remembered that he had seen such a stone on their son's desk some time ago. It wasn't there anymore, he was certain of his memory of it since he had remarked to his son on its uniqueness and received a vague explanation of where it had been found.

What mystified Tomi and his wife the most was how and where their son was coming across these things. He spent most of his time at the library, at school, or at home. He went with his parents out for meals on weekends, and he was a frequent visitor of a number of stationary stores, craft stores, and bookshops. But his parents knew all of these places, and there was nothing out of the ordinary about any of them.

The night after finding the crystal fragment, Riana sat on the bed in their bedroom with the fragment on her palm, studying it while she waited for her husband to join her.

"Do you think we should talk to him about it?" she asked.

Tomi glanced at her through the open bathroom door, although he couldn't answer right away with his toothbrush in his mouth. It was just as well since he needed some time to think of a reply.

"Well," he said finally, "it's tempting. I have to admit that I'm painfully curious about those books on his shelf. But since he hasn't said anything to us, maybe we should give him a bit more time. He has always been very honest with us, and you know he doesn't like to keep secrets."

"That's true," she murmured, partly to herself. "Maybe if we try to create some opportunities for him to broach the subject."

"That does seem like a good idea," Tomi said thoughtfully, moving to turn off the lights. "If we put our heads together, I'm sure we can come up with something."

So it was decided. Secure in having chosen a plan of action, she placed the crystal fragment on her nightstand and they settled down for a peaceful evening.

That night, Riana had strange dreams and woke with the image of a red dragon flying across the sky in her mind. It was unusual for her to remember her dreams, however, and she soon forgot all about it. It never occurred to her to ask her husband if he had had strange dreams too.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

6.

Tomi and Riana tried tactfully several times over the following months to get their son to talk to them about whatever was going on with him, and Zeref—just as tactfully—avoided telling them anything. They didn't give up, but their surreptitious bids for information had to take second place to life in general. A bad flue was going around that year, which kept Riana busy at the hospital, and her husband had gotten a contract for a new series that tied him to his word processor for hours on end. Fortunately for them, they never had to worry about their son's academic performance. But, parents being parents, they found something else to worry about instead—namely, their son's distinct lack of what they considered a normal teenage social life.

"Are there any girls you like at school?" his mother asked hopefully at the breakfast table one morning. Her son was almost sixteen now, and Riana felt as though there had to be someone he was at least a _little_ bit interested in, right? If there wasn't... well, one of her colleagues had been hinting not so subtly that she could introduce her daughter. Personally, Riana thought their children were still too young to be thinking about such things in any seriousness, but then perhaps her friend had a point and they ought to put in the effort to make sure their children ended up with decent partners. Besides, real feeling needed time to grow.

Zeref shook his head, pouring a bit of cream into his coffee. He liked coffee, although he obliged his mother by not drinking more than one cup of it a day.

He didn't have the heart to tell her that the idea of any such relationship made him uneasy. The aversion he'd harbored as a child towards physical contact had lessened over the years, but whatever his parents thought, he had not "grown out of it". It wasn't just about lack of interest, although there was that too.

Riana hesitated for a moment then said, not wanting to be narrow-minded, "You know, if you'd rather have a boyfriend, we—we wouldn't mind either. As long as he treats you well."

Zeref choked on his coffee, set the mug down hurriedly and bent over the sink so his coughing wouldn't get coffee everywhere. His mind flashed back to when Natsu had kissed him and he felt his face grow hot. That had been a year ago though, and Natsu hadn't done anything else like it since.

Come to think of it, being close to Natsu had never made him uncomfortable. At first, it had been because he'd thought everything was just a dream. But even after discovering the truth, it had never occurred to him to find the other wizard's touch troubling.

"We just want you to be happy," his mother continued. "And we're worried about you being lonely."

"Mother," he said, interrupting her before she could really get going on this topic. "I don't like anyone like that."

To be honest, he wasn't entirely sure that wasn't a lie anymore, but no matter what, he most certainly didn't want to talk about it with his parents. Not right now. Not when he wasn't even sure what was going on himself.

"And I'm not lonely."

"Oh." His mother sighed. "Well, you will tell me if there is someone, won't you?"

He didn't answer right away. He supposed he would have to if there ever was someone, but at the same time...

"How would I know?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but paused when she realized that she didn't know what he was asking about. "Know what, dear?"

"If I loved someone."

His mother took a long time to answer. She knew from experience that she had to choose her words with care. Her son tended to think about everything in life very seriously, including the things that people said.

"It's hard to give one definitive answer," she said at last. "Love is... a very personal thing. I mean, when you care for someone so much that their happiness makes you happy and their pain is your pain too. You want to be close to that person, and you miss them when they're gone. They're... they're—important to you. Just very, very important."

His thoughts flicked back once more to something Natsu had told him once.

" _You were very important to me_."

Riana sighed. "I'm sorry if that's not especially helpful. I've only ever really been in love with your father, and I've never been inclined to be very romantic or to indulge much in flirting. From a practical sense, though, I'll say that when you are thinking about spending the rest of your life with someone, you should make sure you're able to talk, have things in common and things to talk about. Two people who can't share their thoughts honestly with one another have no business engaging in a relationship."

Zeref poured himself another mug of coffee while he listened to his mother detail her list of criteria for successful relationships. She always had been the pragmatic sort, and she often organized her thoughts into lists and criteria—to simplify matters. And like most parents, she found it hard to resist an opportunity to give advice.

Being the pragmatic sort as well, this generally suited Zeref just fine, and it was good advice in its way, but it wasn't what he had been asking. Still, she had inadvertently given him something to think about.

.

"Natsu..."

"Yeah?"

Zeref fidgeted. Natsu had brought him a book today—apparently recommended by one of his friends—and they'd been reading from it, or rather, Zeref had been reading from it while the dragon listened. It was a fun story and they'd enjoyed the first two chapters, but it was almost time to wake up and Zeref had something he had to ask before then. It was harder than he had thought it would be, however, to say the words.

"My mother wanted to know if I liked anyone," he managed at last.

Abruptly, the dragon went very still.

Zeref shifted nervously, the sudden tension in the air making him uncomfortable. But this was important, and if he didn't ask now, he wasn't sure when he'd find the courage again.

"Natsu, could you... would you kiss me again?"

The stillness that followed his tentative request lasted so long that Zeref started to worry whether he had said something wrong. Had he misinterpreted the other's intentions? He was just starting to really wish he hadn't said anything when the warm, scaley side he had been leaning against disappeared.

Thankfully, Natsu didn't give him time to start worrying about the absence as well.

The hand that cupped the side of his face was rough with calluses from countless battles and hard work, but the touch was gentle and sure—careful even. The kiss was like that too, slower and more deliberate than last time. Zeref had heard people describe their experience of kissing with words like "fiery" and "electric", and he could sort of understand why they chose those words when Natsu coaxed his lips apart and slipped his tongue past them to explore his mouth. At the same time, Zeref didn't think either of those words really fit how he felt. It was kind of like excitement—his heart was certainly beating fast enough—but also kind of like comfort. Honestly, he had expected himself to feel at least a little bit awkward, but he didn't.

And Zeref was seized by the feeling that they had done this before, that if they embraced, their bodies would fit together as easily and perfectly as their mouths did. He had the feeling, also, that Natsu was holding back, possibly for fear of frightening him, and that was sort of endearing if unnecessary.

When Zeref opened his eyes—he wasn't sure when he had closed them—he found Natsu watching him intently. He had pulled away some, but he was still quite close and his hand was still cradling the side of his face. The wild-haired wizard didn't say anything though, just waited patiently for him to figure out whatever it was he had been trying to figure out, and Zeref found in that moment that he did indeed care very, very much for this person who was so careful and patient with him. Natsu made him happy. The dragon wizard didn't really have to do anything other than be there and talk with him, and Zeref was comfortable—even liked—being close to him. He marveled at this revelation. He'd always been a little uneasy about close proximity to others, even to his parents, like some illogical part of his subconscious was convinced that physical nearness would result in something bad happening. He attributed it to the dreadfully vivid nightmares he used to have as a child where everything that came close to him died as though his mere presence snuffed out the life force within them. He would wake from those nightmares feeling empty and cold and horrified. He'd never told anyone about them, however, and since he'd started reaming of dragons, they had stopped almost entirely.

"I think," he said since Natsu was still waiting for some kind of response, "that I might like you quite a lot."

The corner of the young man's mouth quirked upward in amusement. "Really? Well, that's good to hear. I wasn't sure what I'd do if you did become interested in someone else. I was afraid I might do something terrible."

Natsu said it in a light, almost joking way, but he was being completely serious.

Zeref leaned into the hand against his cheek and smiled at him. "I'm not sure my parents would approve of you though."

"Why not?"

Despite his usual disregard for other people's opinions, Natsu sounded worried.

Zeref could have given a lot of reasons, but there was only one reason that he thought would really matter in the end.

"Because they don't know you."

"I guess that _is_ a bit of a problem."

Natsu sat down and pulled him into his arms while he thought. It was an absentminded gesture, like he'd done it a hundred times before, and maybe he had. For his part, Zeref was more accustomed to Natsu as a dragon than as a man and took a moment to adjust, cautiously relaxing against the other's chest. The whole situation was rather unfamiliar, but it felt right and he decided that he could get used to it without much effort.

"I've been wondering for awhile if I could actually get into your world," Natsu mused aloud. "I haven't really tried yet. It never seemed like a good time, and from what you've told me, it sounds like people would panic if a dragon suddenly showed up."

"Most definitely," Zeref agreed. It was the kind of thing that got put into monster movies. "Is there some reason you can't visit the way you are now?"

"I suppose I'll have to somehow." Natsu contemplated this for a moment then said, "Anything else you think I should know before I try?"

.

They spent the next several weeks planning. Natsu's home world was very different from his, and although Zeref had told him a lot about how most people lived and the kinds of technology they had, he hadn't said much about their customs or culture. It didn't help that he really didn't know where to begin, what was different exactly, what was important and what wasn't. Some of it was easy to explain, like how city districts and blocks were organized, what cars were, and the function of traffic signals and laws. Other things—like what to say and what not to say to his parents and why it was unusual to challenge someone to a fight—were more difficult.

They would just have to deal with any problems as they arose.

Both of them were too excited by the whole idea to let a bit of confusion get in their way. Or anything else for that matter.

It was about two weeks into this process that Zeref received the letter.

Since the kiss, Natsu had started bringing him presents with increased regularity despite his protests that it was really not necessary. Now that he was viewing their relationship through different eyes, Zeref wondered if the dragon had been subtly courting him all along. Then he wondered if he was thinking too much about it, since subtlety didn't seem to be part of the dragon's vocabulary.

The letter, however, was different. For one thing, it wasn't from Natsu.

"My friends wanted me to give this to you," the dragon said, dropping a brown envelope on the plateau in front of him. "Not sure why they were so insistent. Kind of wish I hadn't promised them I wouldn't read it, but they just kept nagging and nagging."

With great curiosity, Zeref opened the envelope and unfolded the several sheets of paper within. It looked like a letter, and quite a long one at that. The handwriting changed several times throughout the multiple pages of text like it had been written by at least three, maybe more different individuals.

 _Hey there_ , the letter began. _It feels a little weird writing to someone we've never met, but here goes. Natsu's probably told you a lot about us, although he hasn't told us as much about you as we would have expected. I suppose when it comes to things about you, he just doesn't want to share—even if it is just information. With everything that's happened, maybe that isn't so surprising. It's hard for us to guess what he's thinking these days, and we don't know how well you've come to know him. Really, that's why we decided that we should write this letter after he told us he'd be trying to visit the actual city where you live—you know, like visit your family and all that. It's not that we're worried anything really bad will happen, or not exactly. It's just that we don't know what it's like there or what kind of people you have around you. Natsu's very protective of the people he cares about, and he's always felt especially strongly about you. It's hard to explain, but you could say it's because he used to be the only person in the world that you trusted without question, and he knew that.._.

The letter ran on over three sheets of paper, touching on various topics here and there, but always returning to the same tentative warning.

"I think they're worried," Zeref said, finally stowing the letter away and looking up at the dragon, who was shifting restlessly with thinly concealed curiosity. "That something will go wrong when you visit and you'll hurt someone and get us in trouble."

The dragon started to retort, annoyed that they had written such things about him, then hesitated and looked away. "I suppose I can't blame them."

"I'm not worried," Zeref assured him. "Besides, the city where I live is probably a lot safer than the one you live in."

And most people were too busy with their own lives and problems to pay much attention to anyone else. For once, these seemed like good things.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

7.

It was Saturday, and Zeref's parents had decided that they were long overdue for a family day out. Perhaps it had something to do with their respective occupations and how busy their lives normally were, but his parents shared an almost maniacal commitment to making time for family. Zeref appreciated this, but... he would have preferred to receive more warning.

"We're what?" he asked, staring at his mother over the rim of his coffee mug. Even though both his parents had been up for half an hour already, there were no signs of breakfast on the table, eaten or otherwise, and now he knew why.

"Your father bought us an annual pass to the national park. You know, the one we passed by when we moved here. We're leaving in an hour and we'll be staying the night at this nice hotel they have, so you'd better get ready."

"Why an annual pass?" he asked, mystified. "We've never gone before."

And he saw no reason to think that they would ever go again after this. He liked spending time outdoors, but he'd always thought his parents were both more indoors people with the exception of their own garden.

"Your father's working on a book for them," Riana explained, giving all the appliances in the kitchen a onceover, making sure everything was switched off. "And I think we should try hiking more. It's good for you."

Ah, okay, that made sense. His mother was big on making sure they all stayed healthy. She was, after all, a doctor. And unlike with her patients, she could be around to supervise most aspects of their lives.

"We'll catch breakfast on the way," she added.

News delivered, she disappeared back in the direction of her bedroom, presumably to do her own packing.

Zeref watched her go, wondering if he should be worried. Natsu had told him that he would find a way to visit, but he hadn't been able to determine a specific time. Zeref hadn't thought it would be a problem, but that was when he'd assumed he would be home. Perhaps he could write him a note.

He finished his coffee, rinsed the mug, and went in search of a notepad and a pen. Back in his own room, he started to write Natsu's name at the top of the paper, thought about his parents poking their heads in, and changed his mind. Instead, he jotted down that his family was going on a short vacation to a national park. Let's see, maybe he could draw a map?

"Mother," he said, walking to his parents' room. "Do you have the directions to the park? Or wherever we're staying?"

He found his mother in the closet rooting through her limited collection of casual clothes.

Her muffled voice drifted out to him, "Give me a minute, dear. Where _is_ that jacket? I could have sworn..."

While he waited, Zeref glanced around and inhaled sharply, gaze settling on something resting upon the nightstand. It was a small glass bottle full of something silvery that glittered in the morning light. Was that...?

Startled, Zeref moved across the room and picked it up. The clear glass felt cold in his fingers and its contents sent a tingle through his skin. This close, there was no mistaking it. The sand and the crystal shard atop it, he had seen them last in a strange dreamscape forest with a dragon nearby feasting on a creature he had no name for.

"Mother?"

The odd note in his voice finally brought his mother out of the closet. She glanced at his face first then at the glass bottle still in his hands.

For a moment, she stood very still, and then she said, "I found it when I got the laundry from your room. They're quite unusual. We—that is, your father and I—can't seem to figure out what they are exactly."

Or where they came from.

Zeref didn't know how to respond, couldn't figure out how much he could say or if he should say anything. Well, the sand was right there and she had admitted to not being able to identify what it was, so she would believe him, right? But then where to start? How did you start telling someone about more than six years of a life she knew nothing about and had never wanted to know anything about?

Riana exhaled in a rush. She folded the shirt she still held and set it back on one of the shelves in the closet.

"Listen," she said, walking over to him and reaching for the bottle, "your father and I have been talking, and—"

Her fingertips brushed the bottle of sand, and suddenly, their peaceful Saturday morning was no longer so peaceful anymore.

.

When Natsu looked down to find the city he knew Zeref lived in—the boy had shown him pictures—he was thrilled. It had worked! He was here.

Before the beginning cries of terror and alarm could escalate into full blown panic, he landed on the flat rooftop of a skyscraper and transformed. The sounds of distress from the streets died down and changed to sounds of confusion. Hopefully, they would decide that they had just experienced an odd moment of shared hallucination. Humans were notoriously good at only believing what they wanted to believe and dismissing blatant evidence of what they considered impossible. Even in Fiore, with dragons being as rare as they were, people seldom believed it when they saw a dragon. Most of the time, Natsu found this very annoying, but he had to admit that it had its advantages at times like these.

The first thing he noticed as he stood surveying his new surroundings was the noise. Even in Fiore's bustling capital city, it hadn't been this noisy or this chaotic. The blaring of horns, the rumble of all people talking and laughing and shouting, the machines they had here—all of it mingled and bled together into a muted roar that was really rather astounding.

Peering down into the street, Natsu inspected the people passing by on the sidewalks and the many colorful, metal boxes on wheels that Zeref had explained to him were vehicles that ran on gasoline and electricity. Cars, if he remembered correctly. They moved extremely fast and looked, in Natsu's opinion, rather dangerous, especially with how many of them there were zooming this way and that.

The smells of this world were just as loud and chaotic as the sounds. There were the usual smells of food and life that came with human settlements, but there was also a profusion of metallic scents mixed with smoke and something like tar.

Finding one person in all this mess could prove trickier than he had anticipated, but Natsu wasn't worried. He was good at tracking people down. Besides, if he had been able to find one soul in the myriad of universes out there, he could find one soul in a single overpopulated human city.

Right, so what had Zeref told him about addresses again?

.

Tomi jumped at the sound of something hitting the floor in the next room. The thud was alarmingly loud, and it felt even louder compared to the utter stillness that followed. He paused in sorting through the reference materials he wanted to bring with them on the trip and listened hard, frowning.

His ears caught only silence. No talking, no sounds of packing—no movement whatsoever.

"Zeref? Riana?"

No reply.

Concerned, Tomi left his small office with its crammed bookshelves and started towards the bedroom next door. When he spotted the two bodies sprawled on the floor of the bedroom he shared with his wife, he couldn't at first process it. The scene just didn't make any sense. When it finally clicked in his head what he was seeing, he ran forward and knelt to check their pulse and breathing, fumbling for his cell phone with his other hand. Neither responded whe he called their names, and through his rising panic, it took him longer than it should have to realize that he had left his phone on his study desk. Cursing, he leapt up and ran back to the other room, but before he could dial for emergency, a crash resounded through the apartment from the direction of the front door.

.

When Zeref opened his eyes to find himself staring up at a familiar stretch of silver sand, he wasn't immediately worried. The worry didn't start until he sat up and spotted his mother sprawled a few paces away, still unconscious. Unlike him, her form was slightly transparent, and he could see the landscape through her.

He wasn't a swearing sort of person, but if he had been, this would have been a good time for it.

His worry increased when further inspection of his surroundings proved that he had, in fact, never been to this part of the in-between world before. The silver sand that stretched out in all directions around them was similar to that of the petrified forest, but there, the similarities ended.

"Mother? Mother, you have to wake up. We can't stay here."

He shook her shoulder, glancing anxiously from his mother to the vast expanse of moonlit dunes. It was night in this world right now, but the stars shone incredibly bright with a cold light that made him shiver. He had never been in this world without Natsu before with the exception of very short minutes on the plateau, and he felt suddenly certain that it was not safe.

Riana's eyelids fluttered and her fingers twitched. When she felt the sand beneath them, her eyes shot open and she sat up, staring around with more confusion than anything.

"What happened? Where are we?"

Zeref sat back on his heels, worrying at his lower lip.

"I'll try to explain as we walk, but we have to get moving."

Above everything else, Doctor Riana was a practical woman, and she knew her son well enough to know that if he was this worried, there had to be a good reason. So rather than argue, she got to her feet, shook the strange, silvery sand from her clothes, and gestured for him to show the way. With interest, she noted how her son glanced up at the sky as though using the glimmer of alien stars to decide where he was. She had no idea where this place was, but it was certainly not her son's first visit.

"You've been here before," she said as they began to walk. "This is where that sand and crystal came from."

Zeref nodded.

"I... usually come here when I sleep, but it's more than just a dream."

He waited, giving his mother time to turn the idea over in her mind and come to terms with it. She had found real sand from this place in his room, so she couldn't reasonably refute the realness of it

After a few long minutes, Riana asked carefully, "And how long has this been happening?"

"Since I was nine."

The pause that followed this answer dragged on so long that Zeref started to speak again.

"This is—something like another world. A place between different places. Chances are that our bodies are still back in the apartment."

"Does anything live here?"

"Yes, and we—I—think they're dangerous. I can't be sure, but I suspect that they feed off the energy of souls. I don't know if we'd die if we got eaten, but I don't really want to find out."

To her credit, his mother's voice sounded only a little strained when she asked, "And you've been coming to such a dangerous place every time you sleep for more than six years?"

Zeref was glad that they were walking and he couldn't see her expression. Her anxiety made him feel guilty.

"I really wasn't in any danger."

"Then what makes this time different?"

Zeref hesitated for a moment then said, "I wasn't alone. Someone else was watching out for me. I'm sure he'll come find us, but it could take some time. And... I do have my magic, but I haven't exactly been developing spells to fight monsters. It just never came up."

And he had his mother to think of too. He didn't tell her that that was the big thing worrying him though. She was the one who was really defenseless here, but she could figure that out for herself. He didn't want to draw attention to the fact and put her even more on edge.

"So what do we do now?" she asked finally.

Zeref thought for a moment before answering, laying out their options in his head as he spoke. "I think we should find somewhere to take shelter first if we can. All this open sand makes us vulnerable and easy to spot. I'm not sure exactly where we are. The landscape around here changes a lot. Higher up would be better though, so if we could find any mountains or that sort of thing. Then I'd really like to try to contact Natsu..."

.

This was turning out to be the strangest Saturday in Tomi's life. First, the other members of his family passed out at the same time for no apparent reason, and then a young man he had never seen before broke into his home and ran straight to his son like he had known exactly where the boy would be. He snapped at Tomi to move Riana to the bed mere steps from her body and then picked up Zeref himself, handling him with a degree of familiarity that Tomi found rather disturbing from a stranger. At the same time, something about the way the stranger spoke—like he knew exactly what was going on and who he was talking to—made the writer listen to him rather than phone the police.

The young man held his son for a moment, his eyes going unfocused as though looking at something Tomi couldn't see, then he swore and gently settled the boy on the covers next to his mother.

"Did you see what happened?" the newcomer asked, turning to Tomi.

"Uh, before I answer any questions, I think I have the right to know who you are and what you're doing in my home. You don't seem to be a burglar."

The young man frowned and glanced down at Zeref, but then seemed to decide that taking the time to answer his questions wouldn't make matters worse.

"I've known your son for awhile now, and we were planning for me to visit. I was going to get in touch with him beforehand, but when I got here, I felt a flare of magic, so here I am. Oh, and my name's Natsu."

Tomi frowned. He had heard that name before somewhere. Or rather, he had read it.

In his son's story.

At that moment, the writer realized why that strange, silver sand his wife had shown him seemed so familiar. It looked exactly like the sand his son had described in his fictional world... Or not so fictional.

"You said... you sensed magic?" he asked, trying to fit the pieces of this bizarre puzzle together in his mind.

"That's right. From in here. It's why I was in such a hurry. Zeref told me you guys didn't want to believe in the stuff, but magic's very real all right. Er, sorry about your front door, by the way. I promise I'll fix it later."

This was all a bit much, so Tomi shoved it all to the back of his mind for dissecting later and focused instead on what was currently most important.

"So can you tell me what happened to them? Are they in any danger, and do you know how we can wake them up?"

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

8.

This wasn't how Natsu had envisioned himself meeting his partner's parents. For one thing, he had expected both of them to be conscious. For another, he had expected Zeref to be there. But Natsu Dragneal wasn't the kind of person to waste time dwelling on such things, especially not when there was work to be done.

Neither, apparently, was Tomi Dayshara.

A quick search of the room uncovered the small glass bottle of otherworldly sand that had rolled under the nightstand. Natsu held it up to the light and frowned. It definitely still smelled like magic.

"Is that responsible?" Tomi asked.

"Most likely. In which case, I think I know what's happened to them." Natsu glanced at the other man's worried expression and attempted to explain, although explanations weren't really his forte. "They're not really here right now, not their minds anyway, or souls or whatever. They've somehow gone and gotten zapped to the place where this sand is from."

"And that's some kind of dream world."

The Dragon Slayer raised his eyebrows at that. "Yeah, that's right. How'd you know?"

"My son has been writing a story about it," Tomi replied, tone rueful. "I thought he was taking an interest in becoming a writer, but now, I think that perhaps he was writing it for Riana and me. There's always a dragon in his stories too, one that shares your name. I suppose he was trying to make the story more fantastical so we wouldn't suspect that he was retelling real events."

"I don't know about that." Natsu grinned crookedly. "You might be surprised. But we can talk about that later. Right now, I've got to go find them. I swear that I'll make sure they're all right."

"Would it be possible for me to come with you?"

Natsu paused to consider this. If it had been his own wife and son that were lost in another world, he wouldn't have been okay with staying behind either. However, he owed it to Zeref to ensure this man's safety.

"I might be able to bring you along if you insist, but I don't think that would be the best thing to do. You don't have any magic, and where we're going... Let's just say that it's not a very friendly place for people with no magic. It takes a certain degree of magical power to travel through that world at all—if you want to really be there in person and not just as a soul."

Thanks to Zeref's writings, Tomi actually understood what he was talking about. His gaze returned to his family, and he sighed. Reluctant though he was to leave everything in this stranger's hands, it seemed like the only smart course of action. Besides, someone had to look after the bodies, and his son trusted him.

Aloud, Tomi said, "I suppose I'd better stay here then. But I want a full explanation when you all get back."

And in the meantime, he could take the chance to review all those pages of story his son had given him which were turning out not to be fiction after all.

.

It was night time in this world of silver sand and dark gray stone, although the bright light of the moon above lit everything with a soft, pale glow that emphasized its unearthly qualities. Riana could see why her son tended to refer to it as a dream world. It had that almost ethereal atmosphere that came with dreams, although the sand beneath her feet and between her toes was most definitely solid. It was strange how she could touch it at all with how much she currently resembled a ghost. She could feel the scratch of it against her skin, and she wished that this world had provided them with shoes and not just clothes. Perhaps it was because they had been wearing no shoes when they had been caught up in whatever magic brought them here.

On the bright side, she never seemed to tire here no matter how far they walked or how quickly they moved.

Every now and then, Zeref would pause to inspect the sky overhead and the landmarks nearby.

"There are some more stable areas," he told her, gesturing towards the bluish silhouette of mountains in the distance. "We are quite far from where I usually wake up here, so I'm looking for someplace else that I am more familiar with."

Riana could understand the desire to find somewhere familiar. They hadn't seen any other living things since their arrival, but they had spotted footprints. It was eerie, the way the footprints started out of nowhere only to disappear once more as though whoever had left them had simply vanished or walked up into the sky. The silence, too, made her skin prickle, disturbed only by a warm breeze barely strong enough to stir her hair. Maybe she was just being paranoid, but she thought it felt like the kind of silence you got in forests when a predator was nearby, when all the birds and other small animals went quiet and held still so that you couldn't hear them even though you knew they were there.

"It would be best if we could get to the plateau," Zeref continued as though talking to himself. "I always start out there when I get here by falling asleep. I assumed that it was some kind of anchor point for me, or some kind of door."

It bothered Riana that she had no idea what he was talking about. How much had she missed by choosing not to think about this particular aspect of her child? What exactly had frightened her so much about the idea of real magic? From this point in time looking back, it was hard for her to recreate her own emotions. It had been partly her son's personality, the calm certainty and _knowing_ that had seemed so out of place in a child. She knew that the neighbors in their old neighborhood muttered to one another about how "unnatural" his behavior was, and the gossip had made her angry even as she ignored it—or tried to. But combine that with coming home to find Zeref looking with intense fascination at a fire that kept changing colors and it was hard not to feel a cold shiver run along her spine. If he had been older at the time, it might have been different, but as a child... She gave her head a small shake, dragging her thoughts back to the present. Zeref kept casting anxious looks her way when he thought she wasn't paying attention, obviously concerned for her, and it was making her feel guilty. However, after all these years of silence, it was hard to figure out how to begin bridging this particular gap. She had talked about it with her husband, but he hadn't exactly been a wealth of bright ideas either.

Well, the opposite of silence was communication. Thinking back, she wondered why she'd never noticed when Zeref stopped coming to her with his stories and problems. She'd assumed it was just part of growing up, but maybe she'd been wrong. A conversation was as good a place to start as any.

"Could you maybe tell me more about this world? And what you usually do here."

Zeref hesitated for only a second before answering. "Natsu and I explore this place. It has a lot of strange things in it, like crystal forests and lakes where you can see visions. He takes me flying, and we talk a lot."

His voice turned wistful, and Riana found her eyebrows going up. It wasn't just because of the mention of flying, although that was strange enough. It was more that she had never heard her son talk about anyone with so much... warmth? Affection? Happiness?

"Who is this Natsu exactly?" she asked. "You mentioned that he's a wizard."

The word felt foreign on her tongue.

"From another world," Zeref explained. "Where he's from, there are a lot of wizards, and they have wizard guilds where people go to request help with different jobs. He's been traveling a lot, searching for... well, that's how we met anyway. He found me the first time I found myself here."

Riana got the feeling that she wasn't getting the whole story here, but she hadn't expected to. There was probably a lot she wouldn't understand right away, and a lot he might be unsure about sharing. For that matter, she suspected that there might be some things she wouldn't want to hear. They would just have to take things one at a time.

.

Zeref sensed the shift in their surroundings, although he couldn't put words to the feeling. His heartbeat sped up and his mind scrambled to compile a list of spells that might protect them. Something was coming for them, and it wasn't friendly.

Ahead of them, he could see the twin pinnacles of black rock that he had been leading them towards. It was one of the dozen or so stable landmarks that he and Natsu had identified, and he hoped that the other wizard would check those first when he found out what had happened. Zeref had also hoped that they could climb up to the flat top of the pillar where they would be easier to spot and farther from the ground where the predators of this world seemed to dwell. Unfortunately, even though they were close enough to be in the shadow of the pinnacles, they were still too far away to use it as shelter.

Behind them, something let out a hollow, shrieking cry that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

Zeref looked back over his shoulder, searching the sandy plain behind them for signs of movement. There, slicing through the dunes was a bony ridge like a shark's fin above the sand. He couldn't see the rest of the creature, but judging from the size of the fin, it had to be quite massive. It was also moving extremely quickly, more quickly than the two humans could possibly run.

Mind made up, Zeref stopped and turned to face the oncoming beast, making a tossing motion up towards the sky. A sphere of light flew from his hand, brighter than the stars, but he didn't have time to check if it went to hover at the height of the pinnacles as he had intended it to. A split second after he had thrown the light, the creature pursuing them emerged from beneath the sand with another unearthly shriek. Runes flared gold upon the air as Zeref threw up a hasty barrier, praying that it would work. He had designed it to repel bullets on the off chance that he ever crossed paths with a gunman, not to ward off monsters the size of three-story houses. Giant monsters were, after all, in pretty short supply at home. The creature's blunt, bony skull crashed into the magical barrier and it reeled back a little ways, shaking its head as though to clear it. It appeared to be confused, not that Zeref could blame it. No one ever got used to running into invisible walls. That was the whole point of those walls being invisible.

"We have to keep running!" his mother shouted over the monster's angry roar, tugging on his sleeve.

"We can't," Zeref called back to her, pouring as much power as he could into the spell and expanding it to form a protective bubble around them. "It's too fast. It would just run us down. We'll be better off staying in one spot and fending it off until Natsu can find us."

"You keep saying that," his mother said, beginning to get exasperated. "But how can you even be sure he's here? You said you met him in your sleep, but it's morning in our world right now. How do you know he even knows we're here? Or that he would be able to help us?"

Despite the gravity of their situation, this made Zeref smile.

"I can sense him. He's a wizard and can do magic, just like me, except that his magic is very different."

 _Just like me._

He wondered if she realized how much those words meant to him back then. Perhaps she did understand, because she stopped trying to pull him away and stood quietly for a moment next to him.

"I'm sorry."

Zeref blinked, startled, and looked up at her. "For what?"

Riana sighed and reached up to smooth a lock of black hair out of her son's eyes. They had always been such beautiful and unusual eyes, wise and strangely old.

"For not listening when you wanted to talk about it. For asking you to pretend that magic," she paused on the unfamiliar word, "wasn't real."

Zeref didn't know what to say, and a frustrated screech saved him from trying to decide right away. He returned his attention to the beast advancing towards them for another go at his shields and hoped that his mother really meant what he thought she had meant.

At that point, the monster decided that if it couldn't sink its teeth into them, it was going to try and simply swallow them whole, magical shield and all.

.

The crimson dragon leapt from the roof of the apartment building, circling up towards the clouds. He ignored the new eruption of shocked cries and focused on feeling out the boundary between worlds. It was like trying to find the gap in a vast set of invisible curtains, and if he concentrated and angled his wings just the right way—

Within moments, the scene around him shifted, tilting and then righting itself in a whirl of mist accompanied by the smell of magic.

This was turning out to be a very busy day.

He could sense immediately that Zeref was there, although the feeling wasn't distinct enough for him to pinpoint his exact location. That meant that the boy was a great distance away, and Natsu muttered about bad luck and bad timing in his head as he swerved towards the mountain plateau where his partner usually appeared. Chances were high that Zeref would head there if he could, and if he couldn't, he would search for one of the stable landmarks that they had identified to help them navigate through the ever shifting landscape. The Dragon Slayer would just have to search all of them.

The plateau turned out to be deserted, but then Natsu hadn't expected it to be that easy. He circled above it, searching the surrounding area just to be sure, then veered east towards the Glass Lake, which they had named for its utterly still and crystal clear water. However, it wasn't until he drew close to the black stone pinnacles that he caught any sign of unusual movement. A brilliant flicker of light about the towering columns of rock drew his attention from the ground below, and he searched further ahead. Today, the area around the pinnacles was composed of a vast expanse of silver sand, dotted with occasional outcroppings of what looked almost like crystal. Against this pale backdrop, it was easy to pick out the two people he was looking for even from so far away, especially since they were under attack by a creature the size of a large house.

And Natsu's world went red.

.

Zeref had a split second to stare wide-eyed into the darkness of the monster's tooth-lined maw and wonder if a barrier designed to repel bullets would protect them from being digested, then his mother's scream was lost in an enraged roar that all but deafened both of them. Something huge and dark crimson struck the leaping beast in the side and both creatures hit the dunes with enough force to shake the ground beneath their feet. Zeref squinted through the billowing sand, feeling a little lightheaded from the wave of blistering heat that rolled over them.

 _Natsu_.

Relief flowed through him like a refreshing breeze and he only just remembered to keep his barrier up so he and his mother wouldn't get caught up in the spillover from the battle.

The shark-like lizard thrashed free of its assailant and only just managed to dodge a blast of fire that left a molten gash across the landscape. It stayed its momentum by digging its webbed forefeet into the sand and switched its attention to the dragon, only this time, it was fighting for its life. Natsu attacked with vicious efficiency, not bothering with magic with his target within reach of his fangs.

The battle was short and brutal. It ended when the dragon's long claws dug into the creature's soft, unprotected throat and tore down through its chest and belly, effectively gutting it.

Beside him, Zeref could feel his mother shaking.

"Don't worry," Zeref told her, "he's..."

He trailed off, suddenly unsure how to reassure her. It was kind of hard to tell his mother that Natsu wasn't dangerous when she had just watched him rip a monster apart. Its silvery blood showed up horribly well against the dragon's dark crimson scales, and the mangled carcass at his feet made for a gruesome picture. Even Zeref had been a little startled by Natsu's ferocity, and he thought that he could understand now why Natsu's friends had felt it necessary to send him that letter. It must have been terrible to watch someone he loved die right in front of him and not be able to do a thing to prevent it. Zeref hadn't realized until then how fresh that wound still was, and it would be a long time in healing. Despite his generally upbeat attitude, a part of him was still raging at the world for how things had turned out. No amount of power or destruction could change the past. Death wasn't an enemy you could fight in the conventional way, so Natsu had to find other directions for his anger and frustration. Perhaps it was just unfortunate that being a dragon allowed him to engage in a kind of brutality that humans needed tools to achieve.

 _We don't know how well you've come to know him_ , they had said.

For the first time since they'd met, he wondered if perhaps Natsu had been spending too much time as a dragon. At the same time, this, too, was the person he had grown to care for.

It occured to him, also, to be glad that he had been born in a relatively peaceful city to a good family that cared for him the best they knew how even if their well-meaning choices had sometimes hurt him. He had the feeling that if Natsu had found him in less than perfect condition all those years ago, heads would have rolled and the city would have learned the hard way why dragons were portrayed in myths and folklore as such powerful and terrifying beasts.. He was glad that such a thing hadn't been his first impression of Natsu in this life, although he was quite sure that he would have come to love him anyway.

Zeref altered his sentence and told his mother, "He won't hurt us." And then hurried forward to meet the dragon before she could object. Maybe if she saw them interact, she'd be less afraid.

The massive, triangular head turned towards him, and Zeref was relieved to see the wild fury in his eyes calm when they landed on him. Natsu had done so much for him over the years, and Zeref was glad to know that he could do something for him as well.

The dragon folded his wings and moved away from the monster's remains towards the humans.

"Are you two okay?" he asked.

The thunderous rumble of the words made Riana jump, but the worry in his voice was clear. Clear enough that she took a few hesitant steps after her son. Unfortunately, her courage faltered when the dragon lowered his head to her eye level. She couldn't seem to stop shaking, and it took everything she had not to back up. Those razor sharp teeth were even more impressive up close. She thanked the heavens that she couldn't smell blood, but the scent of smoke and ash made her think of volcanoes and forest fires.

Her son didn't hesitate, wrapping his arms as far as they would go around the dragon's snout and giving him a hug, ignoring the silvery blood that stained his clothes.

"We're fine. I'm glad you found us so quickly."

The dragon heaved a sigh and seemed to finally relax.

"I saw your signal. Good idea, by the way." Slitted, green eyes turned to fix on Riana. "You must be his mother. I'm Natsu, nice to meet you."

The doctor swallowed hard and tried to smile. Her son had neglected to mention that his friend was a dragon. She would have appreciated some warning.

"That's—that's right. My name's Riana, and it's nice to meet you too."

Was that amusement she saw flicker in the dragon's eyes?

"I'm not going to eat you," Natsu informed her bluntly. "You can stop trembling. Hey, did you notice that you're transparent? You don't feel sick or anything, do you?"

"Um, no, I don't think so."

"Well, that's good. We should probably still find a way to get you back to your body as soon as possible though." That said, the dragon returned his attention to her son. "Guess I was right about you not being all here, although you look more solid than she does. I think I was right about magical energy giving people more substance in this place."

Zeref nodded then glanced back at his mother. The color was returning to her face and she had taken a cautious step closer. He hoped that was a good sign, because this would be a lot harder if she stayed petrified.

"Natsu, would you take us to the plateau? I think I should be able to get us home from there."

"Of course. That was the plan."

Right. This was the hard part.

Taking a deep breath, Zeref turned to his mother. "Um, we're going to have to fly. Please don't be frightened, and try not to move."

Before her mind could completely process the implications of this, the dragon turned his head and gripped the back of her coat to lift her into the air. She was too dignified to squeak, but her heart was hammering in her chest when the dragon lowered her carefully onto his back.

When she was settled, he let go of her and said, "It's easier than climbing up. You can hold on to the spikes so you don't fall off, and I'll fly as smoothly as I can. Sorry about the blood. I'd go wash it off, but I don't want to leave you two here by yourselves again."

Instructions delivered, he turned to fetch her son.

Riana wondered if maybe she was dreaming after all. All of this was just so unbelievable. But the smooth, armor-like scales felt solid against the palm of her hand and just short of hot enough to burn her, and she could feel the incredible strength of this beast that she had only heard of in myths with a vividness that she never experienced in her dreams. Part of her found this terrifying, but another part—one that she had thought long buried under years of medical school and struggles to make it in what people called the "real" world—was starting to thrum with excitement, and she wondered a little guiltily if that was okay.

.

Zeref sighed in relief when they were finally airborne and he could stop worrying about his mother's safety. Looking after himself in a hostile environment was easy. Looking after someone else, especially someone with no knowledge of the circumstances or dangers, was far more stressful.

He wisshed he could talk to Natsu, but he felt uncomfortable doing so with his mother sitting right behind him. He would just have to wait until they got home and straightened out this mess.

In the meantime, he focused on keeping his balance and not falling off. It would probably give his mother a heart attack.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

9.

Tomi felt like he was back in school, poring over books written by the same author for one of his literature classes, trying to analyze every word and read between the lines for hidden meanings.

The dragon was definitely the focus of the story, although it had been written in first person from the point of view of a human boy. Now that Tomi knew the dragon was, in fact, a real person, he treated this first person perspective with new caution. More likely than not, the narrator's thoughts and emotions were a reflection of—if not an exact transcription of—his son's.

When he had thought it was only fiction, something meant to lead towards a future career in the field, Tomi had considered advising his son to make some changes. Although the world was interesting and the characters were solid and realistic, the plot had been somewhat too slow-paced and peaceful to appeal to most modern audiences. It wasn't that he hadn't enjoyed reading them. In fact, the small adventures that the characters went on as they explored this new world that they shared had made him smile more than once. There had just been something very endearing in their building relationship, something very warm and comfortable and even a little sweet that Tomi wished more published books would incorporate in their work. But it took drama and action to sell stories these days, conflict and snappy dialogue.

Of course, now that he knew these characters were real and these adventures had really happened, he wanted to talk to his son about something else entirely. Or ask his mother to talk to him about something else entirely while Tomi himself had a word with the young man who had broken down their front door that morning.

He wondered also what his son might have edited out, because it was hard to believe that he wouldn't have omitted at least _some_ things, even if it was only because Zeref thought it something minor and unimportant.

Tomi had made it through more than a dozen chapters—still only a fraction of what his son had given him over the past several months—when movement from the bed caused him to lay the manuscript aside and hurry over.

"Riana? Zeref?"

For a moment, he thought his imagination had played a trick on him, then both of them stirred. Zeref's eyes snapped open and he sat up quickly, turning to look at his mother. It took Riana a few seconds longer, and she needed Tomi to help her into a sitting position.

"I feel a little dizzy," she mumbled, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her palms.

"I'll get you some water," Zeref said, getting off the bed and heading for the kitchen. "I think it's because you don't have as much energy as I do. I... Father? What happened to the front door?"

"Right. The front door. Tomi had temporarily moved the living room couch in front of it to prop up the door's remains.

The writer cleared his throat and said, "Your friend."

Silence.

"I'm sorry. I'm sure he didn't mean any harm."

"No, I don't suppose he did."

"I guess... its pretty badly damaged..."

"Probably irreparably so," Tomi agreed, feeling suddenly rather cheerful. "Don't sound so worried. Let's call it extenuating circumstances. Besides, he promised that he'd help fix it."

"Oh... um, I'll help too."

Somewhere in the distance, people started screaming.

So it was a much more eventful meeting than Natsu and Zeref had prepared for, but what was done was done and here they were.

.

They did not, in fact, cancel the national park trip like Zeref had initially thought they would, although they didn't leave the apartment until late afternoon. Instead, Natsu came with them.

Zeref was both happy and relieved that Natsu and his parents seemed to be getting along. Ironically, the problems of the day appeared to have helped rather than hindered this despite the property damage. It helped also that the Dragon Slayer was so straightforward and outspoken. If he had been the secretive type as well as being a wizard who could transform into a carnivorous, fire-breathing mythical beast, Tomi and Riana Dayshara would have found it far more difficult and uncomfortable to ask him questions and try to understand the entire situation. Conversations over dinner in the hotel restaurant—the only place with any food for miles around—started slowly, but picked up momentum with only minimal encouragement from Zeref himself. The fact that all of them had something to say about the food was also advantageous and provoked a rather interesting debate about health, nutritional value, and taste.

Very little was said about anything serious, but that was okay. They had plenty of time to get to that.

The park hotel, seeking to ensure that the writer who would be assisting in their marketing left with a good impression, had provided them with a two-room suite. Unfortunately, they had been expecting three guests, not four, but Natsu declared upon hearing this that he could sleep on the couch in the living room. Yet even though everything was falling into place, Zeref found that he couldn't sleep. He lay for a long time in the unfamiliar hotel bed staring through the darkness at the unfamiliar ceiling, and then he got up and opened his room door, wondering if maybe Natsu would still be awake too.

He spotted Natsu standing by the window, which he had pushed open so that they could hear the sounds of insects from amidst the trees and the hushed whisper of a nearby stream. The expression on his face, or what Zeref could see of it, seemed unusually serious, and he hesitated with his hand still on the door handle.

"I can't sleep either, although I suppose my sleep schedule's been really irregular for awhile now," Natsu said. He didn't need to look to know who was watching him. "The smells here are more like home but different too. I think that maybe the magic that exists in the atmosphere where I'm from has a kind of scent too."

Zeref opened the door the rest of the way and walked across the carpet to stand beside him, peering out at the landscape lit only dimly by the light of the stars. The night was very clear and the air here clean enough to allow them to be seen. Perhaps it was a good thing after all that his father had gotten them an annual pass. He'd like to spend more time here.

"Earth Land still has a lot of wilderness," Natsu said, inclining his head towards the shadowy scene of woods and mountains further in the distance. "I know you told me a lot about the differences, but it's still crazy seeing how different this world is. Your father said that places like these national parks are some of the only regions of wilderness left, and that they have to be protected so that they don't get destroyed by cities always growing larger and pushing out into what used to be countryside."

"So that's what you two were talking about earlier?" Zeref asked, referring to just after dinner when Tomi had asked Zeref and Riana to go on ahead and pick up some brochures and park information from the visitor's center.

"There was that," Natsu admitted. "But he also wanted to talk to me about you. He said that he believed you might be in love with me, and asked me if I knew this."

The corner of Natsu's mouth quirked upward in a wry smirk.

Zeref wished his father hadn't gone and said something like that. It was mildly creepy to think of his father talking to Natsu about such things, although he couldn't explain why that was. How did his father even find out? Neither of them had said anything about it yet.

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him," Natsu said, finally turning to look at him, "that I knew, and that I love you."

These last three words hung in the air between them, just three words that carried so much weight and so many meanings and memories.

Three words that gave Zeref that same intense, fluttery feeling like a clashing combination of joy and extreme anxiety.

"Oh... I'm glad." He wasn't sure how to respond to this, so instead, he said, "It's strange. Normally, when I sleep, I'd go to that other world and you'd be there. But now you're here and..."

He trailed off and ended with, "It just feels strange."

"You didn't have any normal dreams?" Natsu asked, curious.

"I suppose it depends on what you would consider normal. I had a lot of nightmares when I was little, and then I met you and started reaming a lot about dragons."

"Nightmares, huh?"

"Everything around me was always dying," Zeref explained, wandering back across the room to pour himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the coffee table. Cup in hand, he sank down onto the couch and stared into the clear liquid for a moment before taking a sip. "I always woke up feeling terrible, and I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep until the sun started to rise."

It was easier than he'd expected to tell someone about it now, but then perhaps that was because it was Natsu he was telling. He now suspected that there had been more to these nightmares than he'd thought as a child, and true to that suspicion, Natsu seemed unsurprised. The Dragon Slayer didn't say anything though, just came over to sit next to him and slip an arm around his waist.

Sometimes, it seemed as though Natsu knew him better than he knew himself. Someone else might have found this disconcerting, but Zeref found it incredibly comforting.

Natsu's hand was darker than his in a sun-tanned sort of way, he thought, looking down. And he had a lot of small scars, no doubt the result of numerous fights. There was something extremely familiar about it, and now that Zeref had a quiet moment to think about it, he could finally figure out why. In some of those nightmares, just before he jolted awake, he would see a hand reaching out to grasp his own. He always woke before he could see the person's face, but he remembered the feel of that hand because it was warm and alive and strong, and the touch brought with it an incredible, overwhelming relief—but also an aching sense of loss. Like there was somewhere he desperately wanted to be that wasn't where he was.

He had never made the connection before because Natsu spent most of his time as a dragon.

The dark-haired boy sighed and closed his eyes. He was so warm here with Natsu, warm in a way that he had yearned for from the depths of those awful dreams of death and decay. There were so many things that tied them together from whatever lives they'd had to whatever life they were in now. Zeref found this to be incredibly comforting. None of this had come about by chance alone. There was far more to it all than that, and maybe it was okay to think that fate had brought them together even across different dimensions and alternate worlds.

Zeref dozed off still thinking about this, resting his head against Natsu's shoulder. The dragon wizard took the half empty glass of water from his hands and set it on the table then turned so he could pull the smaller boy more comfortably against his chest. Zeref mumbled something incoherent and turned his face into the fabric of his shirt. His dark hair tickled Natsu's nose and the Dragon Slayer couldn't resist burying his nose in the soft, raven strands and inhaling that familiar scent like autumn nights and morning dew.

 _Mine_. The thought flickered through his mind at the recognition of that scent, and Natsu sighed and cursed quietly to himself. It stirred something darkly possessive in him after all this time apart, and both of them being here in the same place in person made the feeling ten times stronger than it had been in the dream world. The part of his mind that was more dragon than human these days demanded that he claim his mate again as soon as possible and make sure no one else could have him. It took great effort to prevent himself from acting on those desires, and he wondered how long he could keep this up.

His friends were right about one thing. He could not—was not willing or able to—just let Zeref go on living his life here without him. It looked like he would be visiting a lot more often, which also meant learning more about how people lived in this world. If that caused any problems in the future, he would deal with them if and when they arose.

Briefly, Natsu debated carrying the sleeping boy back to his room, but he couldn't quite bring himself to let go of him or move away. So instead, he gathered him closer and set himself to listening for any movement from the suite's second bedroom.

.

Back in the world of silver deserts and empty mountain ranges, a single armor-plated creature made its way across the dunes. It had heard the sounds of battle some time ago, and after the noise had died down, curiosity had driven it to investigate. The disemboweled remains of its fellow had been surprising but not too unusual. Some of the beings that passed through this world were dangerous, and even amongst themselves, there was sometimes conflict over food.

What had really interested it was the telltale smell of a rift in space. It was the smell that usually led it to potential prey, only this scent was much, much stronger than any it had come across before. Following the scent was easy, and it led the creature along for quite some distance to a single patch of silver sand.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

10.

"So what is this thing exactly?"

"It's a TV. I think I told you about it once when we were planning. Here, you press that to turn it on, and those other buttons let you change the channel and the sound volume."

"And you said people watch shows on this?"

"That's right. Some shows are created by getting a group of actors to perform a story, and it gets recorded and then replayed on TV for people around the world to watch. Then there are cartoons, which are basically drawings that move, and then things like news programs, which are real and tell people what's going on in the world right now."

"Huh, I guess that could be sort of useful."

"It can be, as long as you don't turn into a couch potato."

"A what?"

"A couch potato. That's someone who just watches TV all day and doesn't do anything else, like they've grown roots on the couch."

"You mean like a potato that's sat around for too long."

"Exactly."

Tomi turned his face into the pillow to muffle a laugh. That was a pretty bizarre conversation going on out there in the living room.

"He sounds happy."

At the sound of his wife's voice, Tomi rolled back around so he could look at her.

"He does, doesn't he? I don't think I've heard him talk so much or so freely to anyone in his entire life."

"So... it's okay then?"

The words came out hesitant and uncertain, and Tomi's brow furrowed.

"What do you mean? Do you dislike him?"

"What? Oh no, that's not what I was thinking about." Riana worried at her lower lip. "It's just... do you think Natsu wants to take him back to his own world?"

The writer considered her question seriously. It wasn't the first time it had crossed his mind either.

"I think," he said slowly, "that he might want to, but it will depend on what the two of them decide together."

Riana thought about this for a moment then nodded and sighed. "It's their decision, isn't it? Not ours."

"No, not ours," he agreed gently. "But that doesn't mean we can't give them our two cents. We are his parents, after all. It's our job to give both of them what advice we can."

Riana laughed, but it was a tired and not entirely happy sound. "I know, but what kind of advice can we give? This is magic we're talking about, wizards and other worlds. When we got trapped in that other dimension or world or whatever it was, I was helpless. They were the ones looking after me."

"Zeref's growing up, and it sems to me that his friend has been through far more than we can imagine. Beyond that, there is a lot more between the two of them than we can possibly comprehend. But that doesn't mean our opinions can't be helpful. Besides, we did decide that we were going to try and be as supportive as we can about all this."

"I suppose you're right." Riana let out a soft sigh and then suddenly frowned. "Why do you sound so certain about all of this?"

"Ah, you know those stories he's been writing? I reread them while you two were unconscious. It turns out that they're... not fiction. You can tell a lot about a writer's thoughts and feelings from what he or she writes. That's why I never write when I'm bored. A reader would know I was bored even if I didn't include anything explicit in my words to indicate that I was uninterested."

"I see. I do remember you telling me something similar—back when we met while you were working on that cruise story."

The two of them fell silent, taking a moment to reminisce. They had been so young then and so carefree in the way only youth could truly manage.

"Zeref's younger than we were," she said finally, "but he—they—both of them... seem a lot older. You can tell that they've thought carefully about all this and that they're still thinking about it—about what problems they might have, what they want to do, and how to make things work. It makes me wonder about... well, about a lot of things that I get the feeling they're not telling us, but at the same time, I don't think I want to know."

She fell silent once more, and on the other side of the door, there was a laugh that she almost didn't recognize. How long had it been since she'd heard Zeref really laugh? Why did it have to be so hard as a parent to decide when and how much to stick your nose into your children's lives and problems, especially once they started growing up?

"There's no point now trying to figure out what we could have or should have done or noticed," Tomi said as though having read her mind. "There's nothing we can do about that now, and we've already decided to change. All things considered, I think everything's turned out pretty well."

.

The four of them enjoyed their brief stay at the national park, and when Natsu asked if he could stay with them for a couple more days, Tomi and Riana agreed without hesitation. The wizard excused himself to make the necessary arrangements back home, and the three humans watched the dragon circle high over the forest before vanishing without a trace.

"Now that's a sight I'll never forget," Tomi said, shaking his head in disbelief. "So he was the dragon in your stories after all. Literally. Who would have guessed?"

Zeref's eyes fell from the now clear sky to his parents, and he asked hesitantly, "Is... all of this okay?"

There was so much more to that question than he was saying. Was it okay that he had never given up on magic and had spent half his life exploring another world? Was it okay that he wanted to know more about those other worlds, and that he may, in the future, wish to travel to them? Was it okay that Natsu was real and that he loved him and Zeref loved him back?

He was not asking for their approval, not exactly. Whether or not his parents approved would not change who he was or how he felt. He was asking for their acceptance because they were his parents and he loved them, and because their disapproval would hurt him.

The two adults exchanged looks then Riana said, "It's going to take some getting used to, but like I said before, as long as you're happy... Besides, Natsu seems like a decent young man, and I'm sure he'll take care of you."

"Of course, if you do go anywhere dangerous, we'll expect you to be extremely careful and bring yourself home in one piece," Tomi added. "We don't want to hear that you got eaten by a monster or something along those lines. I assume you're cautious enough with all this magic business at home since you haven't injured yourself yet or set the apartment on fire or anything."

Zeref didn't hug them—he generally didn't—but he gave them a bright, genuine smile that assured them that they had made the right choices—said the things that he had needed them to say.

The car ride back into the city was quiet, but in a comfortable rather than awkward sort of way. Long drives in the evening tended to put Zeref to sleep, but today, he had too much on his mind to doze off. He couldn't wait for Natsu to come back, although he felt a pang at the thought of not being able to visit the dream world together for awhile. He would miss the peaceful times they spent together there, but at the same time, it made him happy that the dragon could and would be a bigger part of his life from now on.

He was no longer just dreaming, and the significance of this realization made his heart race.

He almost forgot that he still had to go to school tomorrow.

.

It was not unusual for Zeref to appear as though he wasn't paying attention in class. He was, though, at least in part, and since he always turned in his assignments on time and answered any questions asked him with no trouble, the teachers left him to his own thoughts.

On this particular afternoon, he sat at his desk by the window staring out at the sky. It was math, his last period for the day, and the teacher had set them to solving practice problems during the last fifteen minutes of class. From two rows behind him, two pairs of green eyes watched as he paused now and then to write something down in his notebook before spacing out again.

"Something's different about him today," the owner of one of those pairs of eyes remarked to the boy seated to her right.

"Yeah?" the boy replied skeptically. "How can you tell? He seems pretty much the same as always to me."

"It's obvious." She gestured towards their dark-haired classmate with her pencil. "Normally, he would have finished these problems already and shut his notebook. He likes to pack all his things early so he can leave the moment the bell rings."

"Right. Obvious." Her companion shook his head. "So he's doing his work more slowly today. What's the big deal?"

"I think," she said slowly, "he's excited about something."

"Uh, are you sure you're not imagining things? Zeref's never excited about anything. Hell, I don't think he's ever even been really happy about anything, forget excited."

"That's not true," his companion retorted without hesitation. "You know when he looks like he's thinking about something else? Something other than class and magic, I mean. You can tell whatever he's thinking about makes him happy because he almost smiles."

"Almost smiles? You can't expect me to notice someone almost smile. And anyway, where are you going with all this? Does any of this matter?"

"What are you saying? He's our friend. Don't you want to know why he's acting different?"

The boy ran a hand through his messy blond hair and frowned.

"He has been really nice to us and all, teaching us about magic and stuff, but you know as well as I do that he's a really private person. I don't think he'd appreciate us sticking our noses into his business. I know you're just looking after your friends, Mavis, but some people like keeping to themselves."

"I know that," Mavis said then sighed wistfully. "But he's never been this excited before. Aren't you curious, Yuri? We've technically known him for awhile now and been in the same classes as him for years, but we still don't really know anything about him. Not about what he wants to do in the future or how he likes to spend his free time. Things that friends should know about."

Yuri had to admit that she had a point. He was, in fact, very curious, and growing increasingly so the more she talked about it. All the same, he really hoped he didn't regret this. That was the problem with Mavis and all her crazy ideas. She had a knack for making them sound like good ones, and while he had to admit that most of them did turn out in the end to be good ideas, some of them did not. And the ones that did not tended to be disastrous.

That was how the two of them found themselves following Zeref after school. Thankfully, their other three friends all had other activities scheduled or else it would have been five. Even so, Yuri felt incredibly conspicuous as they snuck from behind trash cans and ducked into alleyways or shop fronts.

"You know this could be considered stalking," he felt compelled to tell her as they crouched hurriedly beside a parked car out of their target's line of sight.

"But we're not doing anything bad," she replied, sounding perfectly reasonable. Then they were off again, their less than perfectly legitimate activity taking them towards downtown.

"Doesn't he live in the other direction?" Yuri asked, giving in. This was, after all, kind of exciting.

"I think so, but the public library is downtown."

"That's true. I'm sure I saw him there before—when I was looking for books for that report in history."

They were wrong, however, and instead of turning left down Page Street towards the library, Zeref turned right. He passed a bookstore, several coffee shops and diners, and a convenience store, then turned right again into one of the city's more notable parks. There were plenty of other people there today: families out picnicking, people walking their dogs, and groups of friends playing games out on the grass. Zeref lingered by one of the three huge water fountains for which the park was famous, glancing this way and that as though looking for someone.

"Is he expecting someone?" Yuri wondered aloud. Strange. He'd been under the impression that Zeref didn't associate much with anyone outside of their magic club and his own family.

Mavis shushed him and he fell silent.

They didn't have to wait long, which was good because hiding amidst these bushes was starting to get scratchy and uncomfortable.

Zeref straightened suddenly, his gaze focused on a young man making his way through the park towards him. He was lean and well-muscled with a head of wild hair and a tattoo on his left shoulder. The sight of that tattoo made both observers feel a little strange, like they'd seen it somewhere before except that they knew they hadn't. Then the stranger reached their sort-of friend and slung an arm around his shoulders. They noted with interest that Zeref didn't flinch away from the contact. When he was with the five of them, he always kept some distance between them and himself. It seemed to be an unconscious habit—most of the time anyway, although there had been a few instances where their presence seemed to make him actually uncomfortable. They had written it down as just one of those things about him that made him a little weird. So then what made this newcomer so different?

"I wish we knew what they were saying," Mavis murmured.

It was a moot point though. They were too far away, the entire area was far too noisy, and neither of them were that great at reading lips. It wasn't exactly a skill they had ever needed.

And then the stranger leaned down for a moment and—and—

The two watchers stared wide-eyed.

"Did you see that?" Yuri asked, not quite believing the evidence of his own eyes.

"That stranger just kissed him," she said, completely forgetting to whisper in her own surprise. "I wonder who he is. I don't think I've ever seen him before. He feels as though he's a decent person though, so I don't think we have to worry."

Yuri put a hand on her shoulder.

"Come on, I think we know why he was excited to get out of school today now. We should go."

She considered for a moment then conceded.

"You're right." Then she smiled and added, "I'm glad Zeref has someone that he can be so open with. We should give them some privacy."

Besides, both of them could swear that the stranger had glanced in their direction. How he could know they were there, they had no idea, but they didn't want to push their luck.

.

Natsu pulled away from the kiss and asked, "Hey, did you know that there are two people following you?"

Zeref blinked and looked around. There were always a great many people at this park, however, and he had no idea who he should be looking for.

"There are?"

"You can't see them very well from here, but they're hiding in the bushes behind one of the benches. A boy and a girl, both blond. Your classmates, I'm guessing?"

"Oh." The dark-haired boy relaxed. "You're probably right. I wonder why they came all this way."

It seemed he wasn't nearly as paranoid in this life as he had been in his previous one, probably because he hadn't spent hundreds of years being hunted. That was good, Natsu thought. No one needed that sort of baggage.

"I've never given anyone a city tour before," Zeref said, already forgetting about his stalkers. "But I've picked out a few places I thought it might be good for you to know if you'll be visiting more. Before we go though, I thought we should both put these on."

Natsu took the silver pin he offered to him with his free hand, his other arm still around his companion. It was shaped like a miniature shield only about the size of a thumbnail, and when he tilted it so that the sunlight gleamed off its polished surface, he could see the image of a scroll being signed by a quill pen etched upon it.

"What's it for?"

"It's a charm to stop people from listening in on other people's conversations," Zeref explained, attaching the matching pin to the collar of his school jacket. "We can talk about things like magic, but all anyone close to us will hear is normal, everyday things. Like what the whether is like and where we might want to eat dinner."

"That's awesome. And you made it?"

Zeref blushed and looked away. Natsu found the reaction rather adorable and more than a bit amusing since Zeref never used to get embarrassed about anything, especially not praise. What was it he used to say? That he was far too old for silly emotions like embarrassment.

"Awhile ago. I was thinking about Mother's patients and the need at times for confidentiality. Of course, I never told her about it and she'll probably never use it, but..."

He trailed off and shrugged. Useful, practical things. That's what he liked to do with his magic.

"I think it's great," Natsu said firmly. "And I bet you had fun making it."

"I did, and I think it turned out really well."

Zeref smiled, and Natsu wondered what his friends would think if—when—they met him. This Zeref was capable of being so... well, so _happy_. Every time Natsu saw him smile like this or heard him laugh, it eased the weight he had been carrying around with him all this time a little bit more. The Dragon Slayer wondered if he could take any credit for how Zeref had turned out in this life and decided that he probably could.

"So what else have you made?" he asked, removing his arm from Zeref's shoulders so he could pin the silver shield to his vest.

"Well, there was that barrier you saw me use when that monster attacked Mother and me. I designed that spell to repel bullets. Um, that's a kind of projectile weapon that people use these days. Then there's this charm that lets a person breathe underwater for a short period of time, and this other one that stops people from getting burnt when they walk through a fire. It only lasts for about ten minutes, but I thought it would be helpful for firefighters." He sighed. "I'm not sure any of them would want to try it though. I'd probably have to demonstrate that it works and that it's not a trick."

Natsu mulled this over.

"Uh, mind telling me how you know it works?"

"I tested it."

"...So you put a spell on yourself that was supposed to make you fireproof and then what, stuck your hand in a fire to see if it worked?"

"Um, yes. Basically."

"...I'd really rather you didn't do things like that."

"I tried it on a piece of paper first."

"That's not really the point here. I hope you know it only lasts ten minutes because of the piece of paper."

"Um, more or less."

Natsu didn't like this answer, but he had the feeling he would like the straightforward answer even less. This wasn't the time to debate this though, so he reluctantly let the matter drop and just made a mental note to keep a closer eye on the things Zeref took it into his head to do in the future.

"Right, so where to? We'd better get going or we won't be able to make it back in time to eat dinner with your parents. They were very insistent about it."

"I thought we'd start by visiting a convenience store. You can find them pretty much everywhere in a city, and they sell a bit of everything—you know, to make things more convenient for everyone." Zeref hesitated and asked more quietly, "Are they still following us?"

"Huh? Oh, your classmates? Nah, they left."

"That's good. I was afraid they'd notice you weren't from here. They don't seem it, but they're both quite perceptive."

"Would that cause problems?"

"I... I don't know." Zeref frowned. "I've never really told them much about me. It's... not that I don't trust them exactly..."

He stopped, unable to find the right words for feelings he had never been able to explain to himself in the first place.

"Never mind," Natsu said, placing a hand on the small of his back and giving him a gentle push in the direction they had been about to walk before. "Let's go."

.

The apartment was certainly more lively with another person around. Riana never really thought about how quiet Zeref was until he wasn't being quiet anymore. She could hear him in the kitchen now, teaching Natsu how to operate the microwave and some of the other kitchen appliances.

Riana shook her head and turned up the television a little. She wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but she had to admit that her husband was right. Their conversations were really rather funny, if for no other reason than because of how bizarre they got at times.

Speaking of her husband, Tomi should have been back with takeout by now. The restaurant she'd placed the order with was only a few blocks away. What was keeping him?

On the television, a news report was on. Riana hadn't been paying much attention up to that point, but then the image of the hospital she worked at appeared on screen and she leaned forward, listening intently.

"A strange epidemic seems to be spreading through the city. The first case was reported at 10:00 AM this morning when a woman living by Oria Park called the hospital to say that her husband lost consciousness while heading out for a copy of the day's paper. Since then, several people have reported being unable to wake a family member or friend, and the number of cases keeps increasing."

The image on the screen shifted to a hospital ward where several men and women lay apparently asleep. Riana frowned and reached for her cell phone. It looked like she would be working overtime again.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

11.

The apartment was rather quiet with both Riana and Zeref having left for work and school respectively. Natsu stood in his partner's room, his gaze wandering over the bookshelves and walls. He hadn't noticed before how strong the influence of his own presence was here. There were the obvious—the books Natsu had given him over the years lined up neatly upon the shelves, the rice-cake box serving now as a container for stationary, a silver quill pen that Natsu had been given on a job and passed on to Zeref because he was more likely to make use of it... And then there were the things that Natsu hadn't known about, like the sculpture of a dragon on the desk and the posters of dragons on the wall—most of them red.

Looking at all of it now gave the Dragon Slayer an odd sort of feeling, not exactly happiness but not sadness either. It made him wonder if he had done the right thing, if he had made the right choices or if he'd been selfish in establishing himself this way in Zeref's life. Consciously or not and regardless of his intentions, his choices had ensured that Zeref would never be able to simply live peacefully in this new world where he had been reborn. But he had told Natsu that he was happy, so it had to be all right, right? It wasn't like anyone other than the two of them had the right to consider the rights and wrongs of their situation.

Life had been easier when he didn't think about these things, Natsu reflected. But it seemed like after his partner's death, all he'd been able to do was think. Well, think and search.

"I did wonder when he developed such an attachment to dragons. I suppose now I know."

Natsu didn't turn to look at the speaker. Despite the muffling effect of the thick, ivory carpet that covered most of the apartment floor, he'd heard the writer approach from his study down the hall long before he reached the door of Zeref's room.

"I assume he'll be out of school at the same time today?"

"That's right," Tomi confirmed. "You'll be going to meet him?"

"Yeah, though I thought I'd head there early and do some exploring."

"Do you know the way?"

"Nah, we didn't have time for that yesterday, but I can find my way."

He could always just track Zeref's scent, or his magic for that matter. Either should lead him straight to the school campus.

"Of course."

Tomi hesitated. Natsu saw his gaze flicker towards the living room and he seemed about to comment on something only to think better of it.

"Well, I've got a meeting to get to in about twenty minutes," the wrier said instead. "I've got an extra key to the front door for you just in case."

Natsu thanked him for the key and excused himself.

Tomi watched him go and listened to the sound of the front door opening and shutting before turning back to survey his son's room. He wondered if he should offer to set up another bed in there. He was pretty sure they had an air mattress stashed away _somewhere_ , but... well, it felt a little awkward. Tomi was generally rather blunt about his thoughts, but this was new territory for him. There was a strange hardness in the way Natsu inspected him and Riana at times, and it made Tomi feel very much like he was being judged. Wasn't it supposed to be the parents who did the evaluating? Heaven knows Riana's parents had made Tomi feel like he was walking on eggshells the first time Riana had introduced him to them. Then again, this situation was rather out of the ordinary, wasn't it? The two spent so much time alone together that it seemed utterly ridiculous for Tomi or his wife to even be thinking about supervising or whatever it was parents were supposed to do.

Tomi had so many questions. Questions about the things that the two wizards hadn't told them of which he was certain there was plenty. Questions about Zeref's atypical behavior as a child that Tomi had pushed aside while he was growing up. Questions about the way Natsu watched them and hovered over their son like a dragon over his gold in children's bedtime stories. Tomi had the feeling that it was all related and that it would be an extraordinary tale.

His mind still whirling with these thoughts, he went back to his office to jot down a few notes and pack up the things he'd need to take with him to his meeting.

.

"Um, Natsu, how old are you exactly?"

"Older than I look," the Dragon Slayer said, sounding amused by the question. "Powerful wizards often age differently from other people, and then there's the influence of my dragon magic. It's hard for me to give you an exact number though. I've noticed that time does funny things when you're traveling across worlds and dimensions. You can spend an hour in one place only to return to another and discover that you've been gone for two days. I think I've even returned home before I left it once. Now _that_ was weird. Is it important?"

"No, it's just that Mother asked me, and I realized that I didn't know."

Around them, the other students from Zeref's high school chatted and laughed as they made plans now that school was out for the day. A few of them cast curious glances Natsu's way, but it wasn't like strangers were all that uncommon in big cities. Who that stranger was with did raise a few eyebrows, but really, it wasn't like Zeref was always alone these days either. There were those other club members of his to consider. So while the sight of them might lead to future gossip, it was no problem at all for the Dragon Slayer to be there.

"Now I have a question for you," Natsu said, inclining his head towards the many small shops that populated the area around the school. "I've spent the morning looking around, and there's some real strange stuff on sale. I mean, do people generally buy fake skeletons and foam tombstones?"

"What?" Zeref was taken aback for a moment until he remembered what time of year it was. Then he laughed. "Oh no, that's not customary. It's all for a holiday that's coming up in a few days called Halloween. It used to be a day when people said the spirit world and living world were unusually close, and people would do things to try and appease the dead and keep evil spirits away—or something like that. Now, it's a day for people to dress up like monsters and go around collecting candy from people participating in the event. There are a lot of costume parties, and people try and scare their friends and that sort of thing. I've never been all that interested to be honest, but some people get really into it."

"Not interested in dressing up as a monster?"

"Not really. I just don't see the point. It's not like any of it's real, and why would anyone want to be a vampire or a zombie anyway if it was?"

It was Natsu's turn to laugh.

"Yeah, I get where you're coming from, although I think the scaring people part might be fun."

"All you'd have to do is turn into a dragon and act threatening."

"Maybe I will," Natsu said wryly. "So where are we going anyway? I thought your apartment building was the other way."

"To a supermarket. Mother asked me to pick some things up for her, and you mentioned once that you're interested in the kinds of foods we have, right? I still need to explain our currency to you."

"About that." Natsu frowned. "I know I can't use money from my world here, but I don't feel right letting your family pay for everything."

"Don't worry about it. We're pretty stable financially, especially with Mother being a doctor. And anyway, the only thing you seem to have any interest in buying is food. It's not like you can go hunting here, and Mother always says that spending money on food is not a waste as long as you intend to eat it."

"No problems there."

They paused at an intersection to wait for the traffic lights to change. There was always so much noise and motion and light in the city, Zeref thought. It had all been so overwhelming when they'd first moved here, and even though he'd gotten used to it by now, he still couldn't say he liked it much. It was just the way things were, not good or bad, but... having Natsu with him did somehow make it better.

Just the fact that the dragon wizard was with him banished that sense of not-belonging that used to make this city feel so suffocating.

He was really getting carried away by all this, wasn't he?

"I'm glad."

Confused, Zeref turned to look up at his companion.

"That you're happy," the Dragon Slayer explained. He smirked and added, "And I'm glad it's because of me."

After a startled moment, Zeref asked, "Can you read my mind?"

Natsu chuckled. "It would be handy, but no. I just know you really well. I do know this one wizard who can hear what people are thinking though."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's crazy. Although I'm not sure if it counts as mind reading since he really does use his ears to hear it."

"I don't suppose you know how he did it."

"Can't say. I'm not even sure it was magic."

The automated glass doors of the supermarket slid open with a hiss as they approached. Zeref paused to grab one of the blue plastic baskets before continuing onward and beginning to describe the general layout of the store.

They were making their way down one of the aisles of frozen foods when they felt it, like a subtle tremor that rippled through the ground beneath their feet. Natsu stopped, still holding one of the refrigerator's glass doors open and Zeref frowned, crouched by his feet with several of the breakfast food boxes in his hands.

"You guys get earthquakes much around here?"

"No," Zeref said, chewing on his lower lip. "It felt... like there was magic in it."

"Yeah," Natsu agreed, eyes narrowed. "Familiar magic."

Without another word, Zeref placed the frozen foods back in their places, Natsu grabbed their shopping basket, and the two of them started down the aisle in search of the source. Nobody else seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary, and by all appearances, neither of them could find anything either. It kept moving closer and then farther away again, like a constant echo bouncing around somewhere just out of reach. Just when they had decided to move their search outside, the feeling vanished all together, leaving them standing by the supermarket deli.

"Do you think we should look around outside anyway?" Zeref asked worriedly, turning the package of chocolate chip cookies he'd been pretending to examine over in his hands.

Natsu growled in frustration but shook his head. "I don't think we'll find anything, and unfortunately, I haven't been around long enough to know which smells are normal and which ones are not. Let's just finish buying whatever your mom wanted and head back. If we sense anything else on the way, we can try searching again."

Zeref nodded and took a second to recall the list of items they still had to find. Natsu was right. This city covered far too much ground and there was far too much going on. Better to get this errand done before they tried to do anything else.

.

Things didn't go quite as they had planned.

Really, they should have expected that by now.

They sensed the disturbance just as they were passing one of the staircases that led down into the city's subway system. They shared a quick glance and, as one, turned and hurried down the steps.

The underground shopping mall was flooded with people at this time, most of them heading to and from the stairwells leading even further down to the subway platforms and others lingering about the many restaurants. With hungry people just getting out of work and students hanging out together before the sky went completely dark, the air was thick with the smells of food, chief among them the sweet aroma of fresh bread and the mouthwatering scent of the various fried snacks that were currently so popular. Zeref avoided coming down here when he could since it always made him feel a little nervous and claustrophobic, but the few times he had had to use the subway trains had been enough for him to have a decent mental picture of the layout. If they did get lost, there were area maps plastered on the walls and support columns at regular intervals throughout the network of hallways.

"It's coming this way," Natsu said, eyes narrowed and voice tense.

As if on cue, someone screamed.

It was like watching a scene out of some strange show on psychic phenomenon. The ground shook and cracks spread across the tiles as though they had been struck by something extremely heavy even though there was nothing there. Some of the lights above flashed and blew apart, sputtering and spraying sparks, and a sign that had been hanging above one of the stairwells snapped from its wire supports to clatter across the floor. Above the shrieks and shouts of alarm, Zeref couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard something roar, a cry like that of some gigantic beast. And even though he couldn't see anything, people began to collapse.

"Oh my god, someone call an ambulance!"

"What happened? Did she get hit by something?"

Zeref took a step towards the people gathered around the injured, but to his surprise, Natsu's hand closed like a vice around his wrist and dragged him back towards the steps leading back up to street level.

"Wait! Shouldn't we do something? There's something there. We can't see it, but it's attacking people."

"Yes, we should do something, and we will. But not right now.'

"But—"

Natsu swung him around and pushed him back up against the wall beside the staircase. Zeref looked up at his partner's rather frightening expression. The Slayer's slitted, green eyes stared intently into his own round, dark ones.

"Listen. Trust me, this is _very_ unlike me. I'm more of the 'rush headlong into battle and figure it out as I go' type, but _I am going to keep you safe_. That means being careful when we can and not taking unnecessary risks." Natsu paused to let this sink in then added, "Anyway, if I just charge in right now like I usually do, I'll probably end up hurting more people than whatever that is. Right now, people are just losing consciousness. If I start throwing my magic around, people are going to die."

Worst case scenario, he could bring this entire underground crashing down around them.

Zeref couldn't speak. He was reminded sharply of a vast, moonlit desert and a molten gash cutting through the dunes from flames so intense that they had left the earth broken and steaming. So instead of saying anything, he relaxed and smiled to show that he understood and wasn't going to argue.

.

After the chaos of the underground, the quiet of the apartment felt strangely unreal. They locked the front door behind them and set about putting away the groceries. They hadn't bought all that much, but their preoccupation with earlier events made the task take longer than it otherwise would have.

"I feel... as though I should recognize the magic we felt back there," Zeref said, staring unseeing at a package of frozen vegetables.

"Yeah, I've been thinking about it, and I'm pretty sure it's from that other place."

This caught the dark-haired boy's attention, and he turned to look at Natsu.

"You don't mean—not one of those creatures we met there? But surely we would have seen something? They weren't invisible before."

"I can't explain it," the Dragon Slayer said with a shrug. "But it smells the same. And whatever it was, it was moving around and attacking people. Kind of seems similar, doesn't it?"

Zeref had to concede the point. It was easy to recall the scene in the underground and edit the giant, shark-like beast into the picture. It would have to be smaller than the one that had attacked him and his mother, but more agile.

His mother had somehow ended up in his dream world. Would it really be so strange to think that a creature from that world had found its way here?

The package of frozen vegetables was starting to make his fingers go numb with cold, so he placed them in the freezer where they belonged and wiped the chilly moisture from his fingers on his shirt. He felt another chill too, however, and this one couldn't be so easily dismissed. It slithered down his back to settle in his stomach, and he thought it felt unpleasantly like guilt.

Before Zeref could voice any of these thoughts, they heard the scrape of a key from the direction of the front door. Both wizards turned towards the noise, and a moment later, Tomi appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"Ah, I was hoping you two would both be here," the writer said. His expression was grave. "Have you seen the news? Every news channel has been replaying footage from some underground surveillance cameras. It was... unusual, and I wanted to ask the two of you your thoughts on the matter."

"We were there," Zeref admitted.

"You were?" Tomi paused to process this information then asked, "So then...?"

"If you're asking if it had something to do with magic," Natsu said, "then yeah, we think it did."

Tomi nodded slowly.

"Then you should probably know that the people injured during that incident were brought to Bright Haven Hospital."

"Where Mother works," Zeref said for Natsu's benefit.

"Assuming," Tomi continued, "and this is a pretty big assumption mind you—but assuming that what happened to them is related to those people who have been dropping unconscious for no reason around the city, that makes more than a dozen cases already."

The three of them contemplated the implications of this for a moment before Tomi spoke once more.

"So... can you help them?"

His gaze flicked from his son to Natsu then back to his son.

"I don't know," Zeref replied, looking to Natsu as well.

"We'll have to figure out exactly what's going on first. I think we can probably stop more attacks, but as for the people who are hurt," Natsu shrugged, just a tad apologetic, "I'm not good at fixing things. I'm really better at destroying them."

Neither of the others were surprised by this, and Zeref added, "I've never been very good at spells for healing either, but it might help us understand the situation if we could see the victims...?"

His father nodded.

"Riana will be working late, but she should have a break coming up. If we leave now, we can pick something up on the way and eat with her."

.

Zeref was starting to get a headache.

He sat in the back of his father's car with Natsu, who was looking rather green and had a grimly focused expression on his face. Zeref rested his head against his shoulder anyway and made a mental note to check with his mother about the details of motion sickness. Maybe he could make a charm for that too. Natsu put an arm around him, and he was overcome with a sudden and rather sharp sense of homesickness. Or something like homesickness, except he knew it wasn't his family's apartment that he longed for. It was a mountain plateau overlooking endless miles of wilderness. It was the feel of wind in his hair and the thunder of dragon wings in his ears. It was the clean, crisp smell of unpolluted air and the strange, surreal nostalgia that came, he now knew, from half forgotten memories and dreams.

"You're stressed," Natsu murmured, his breath warm so close to his ear.

Zeref nodded, although it was more of a statement than a question. He wished they were alone, wished he could just shut out the rest of the world and go back to when he could escape all his worries just by going to sleep.

"Do you regret it?"

Dark eyes blinked open and Zeref shifted to look up at his companion, puzzled.

"This change," Natsu elaborated, keeping his voice quiet so Tomi wouldn't hear.

The sounds of traffic all around them and the sound of the radio playing softly from the front of the car made it easier.

Zeref considered his question carefully. Did he regret how drastically his life had changed from the seemingly simple decision of Natsu's visit? It had been only a few days, but there had been so many ups and downs and changes in those few days that they left him feeling unbalanced. He needed time to adjust to big changes, and he wasn't always happy or graceful about having to do so. As a rule, he found routine and familiarity to be a source of comfort and stability. But this was different. This was the first time in his life that the changes had resulted from something of his own choice. And he had at least one certainty to anchor him; whatever happened in his life, he wanted Natsu to be part of it. He couldn't bear the thought of life otherwise.

"No," he said, letting his eyelids drift shut once more. "I don't regret it."

Riana met them in the hospital's ground floor lobby, her black hair disheveled from frustrated fingers and the corners of her eyes drawn with worry and fatigue. She mustered a smile for them nonetheless, and hurried them through the routine procedures at the front desk before showing them to her office. Like her son, she was an extremely tidy person, so despite the vast number of papers and files in the room, her workspace did not feel cramped or cluttered. It was a simple matter to shift some documents aside so they had room to set out napkins and drinks. For dinner, they'd brought sandwiches for convenience, and she started into hers gratefully as soon as they had all found places to sit.

"I simply don't understand what happened to them," she admitted after swallowing, staring hard at the flecks of white that dusted the top of the warm brown bread. "None of them show any signs of sickness. Just extreme exhaustion."

She gave her head a hard shake and trained her eyes on her husband.

"You said you had something to tell me?"

Tomi cleared his throat and explained about the news report. When he was done, both parents turned their eyes to the two wizards in the room. Now that they had accepted that magic was an inescapable part of their reality, it was easy to recognize something potentially supernatural. In any case, they would no longer write it off as a possibility.

Talking about it was still tough though.

Riana drained her water bottle, cleared her throat, and started, "So, um, about... magic. I assume it's not as simple as just wanting something to happen...?"

Zeref glanced at Natsu, who gave him an encouraging nod. The Dragon Slayer would help the best he could, but explanations and theories weren't his area of expertise.

Zeref took a deep breath and tried to figure out where to begin. They didn't need to know everything he had worked out for himself, just the basics.

"It's not as simple as wanting something to happen," he agreed finally, choosing his words with care. "But what you want is important. All things in the world have a kind of... energy, and that energy is what you use when you cast spells. You can shape that energy with a combination of what you want, shapes or drawings, words, gestures..."

Zeref trailed off and held up his right hand. In the space of a heartbeat, a light flared into existence above his palm.

Riana pursed her lips and leaned forward in her chair. Her gaze was calculating, the kind of gaze she normally wore when faced with a particularly troubling set of symptoms in a patient.

"So you use up this energy when you cast a spell?"

"Yes." Zeref let his hand drop back to his side and the light faded. "That was just a small spell, so it didn't cost a lot. Major spells can make you feel like you've been running in a marathon, but if you rest, you can get that energy back."

"And you have this energy even if you're not a wizard?" Tomi asked, resting his elbows on the desk and tenting his fingers.

"That's right. You can increase the amount of energy you have at your disposal with work—like how an athlete can train to build up stamina."

While his parents digested this information, Natsu spoke up.

"I don't know if it's related, but in my world, people can suffer from severe majic depletion. Something about a person's magical energy and life force being closely connected. It affects wizards more strongly than it affects non-wizards, and it can be life-threatening if it's bad enough."

Riana's forehead wrinkled. Clearly, she _did_ think this was related, and now that they had some idea of what the cause of her comatose patients might be, Zeref thought so too.

.

The hospital ward was quiet, which was to be expected really since not only was it almost midnight, all of the patients tucked into their neat, white beds along either side of the room were asleep. At first glance, it looked almost normal, just patients resting quietly to allow their bodies to recuperate. Some of the patients, however, had more complicated apparatuses hooked up to them next their beds, humming and whirring softly. These were to help the patients breathe, Riana had explained. Some of the patients had come in so tired that they couldn't even breathe properly on their own.

Zeref lingered in the doorway, watching his mother walk from bed to bed, checking for any changes. His stomach turned over at the realization that he and Natsu were essentially taking on the responsibility of making sure that no one else ended up in here.

"Feels kind of like going on a job," Natsu said from behind him, the corner of his mouth quirking upward.

Oh. Zeref blinked, the words taking a few seconds to properly register. This was kind of like the guild assignments Natsu had told him about, wasn't it? People having trouble that they thought wizards might be able to solve. Sure, he had no idea how they were going to fix things, but that was how a lot of those assignments started out. They didn't know how to make things right yet, but they had their magic and their wits. Plenty of people had gone into battle with worse weapons. And what better time to go monster hunting than Halloween?

* * *

TBC...

* * *

.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

12.

"I don't like this plan."

It was the day after they'd visited the hospital and both Zeref's parents were working late, so they had the apartment to themselves that evening. Natsu stood in the doorway to Zeref's bedroom with his arms folded across his chest, scowling. It was a dark and forbidding expression, and Zeref knew that it wasn't entirely because of the plan. It was a good plan, after all, just... a risky one.

"There are going to be risks no matter what we do," Zeref said patiently. "I promise that I'll be careful, and you'll be watching out for me."

He hoped this reminder would soothe the other wizard's agitation, and it did—but only a little bit.

The computer before him on his desk where he sat hummed into life and the screen lit up. Zeref logged into his e-mail and scrolled through the new messages, looking for one sender in particular. His thoughts, however, were focused on the man behind him. To be honest, he quite liked Natsu's protectiveness of him. It made him feel safe and peaceful. But the fact was that life couldn't always _be_ safe and peaceful, not if they were being realistic.

"Natsu, if you can't let me do this without getting this upset, how will I ever be able to go to Earth Land and go on jobs with you there? From what you've told me, a lot of those carry way more risk than what we're about to do."

"I know, I know."

Natsu growled in frustration and stalked over to stand right behind his chair, glaring at the computer screen like all of this was somehow its fault, which of course it wasn't. Zeref had explained to him that it was an information and communication tool people used here that connected them to a whole worldwide network of data. Natsu wasn't clear on the details yet, but he could see how being able to send instant mail was advantageous in such urgent situations.

"Yuri's magic makes him very good with electronics. Or perhaps it's the other way around, and his magic is the way it is because he's good with machines and electricity," Zeref explained, clicking into the e-mail and scanning its contents. He clicked on a link and a city map came on screen with certain locations circled in red and marked with time stamps and casualty counts.

"Are those where people have been attacked?" Natsu asked, grudgingly getting back to the task at hand.

"Assuming all the comatose patients were attacked, yes. It looks like he was able to get places and times," Zeref said. "There has to be some kind of pattern, some way to figure out where it's most likely to strike next. It's hard to imagine that it's just randomly devouring the life force of any creature it comes across."

Indeed, the clusters of red circles on the map lent credibility to this assumption.

"Strange. I would have expected there to be more attacks in crowded places or during times when there's particularly heavy traffic—like when we were down in the underground, but it looks like the opposite is true. Most of the attacks have happened in more isolated areas."

"Makes sense to me," Natsu said, moving to stand behind his chair. "Predators often separate their prey from the group to make bringing it down easier. Makes it easier to get a clean shot too."

Huh, the Dragon Slayer had a point. Zeref hadn't thought of that.

"I suppose that should make things easier."

Although tomorrow night when they planned to act was Halloween and people were amazingly good at seeing only what they believed, so maybe they wouldn't have to work too hard to stop people from noticing. The two of them could probably get into an all-out battle with their target in the middle of the street and nobody would think there was anything magical going on. Of course, the illusion of normalcy wouldn't hold up if they caused too much property damage.

On his desk next to the keyboard, his cell phone buzzed once. Zeref glanced at the text message and frowned.

"Something wrong?" Natsu asked.

Before the boy could answer, the phone buzzed twice more, paused, and then buzzed again.

"It looks like Yuri and the others want to know what's going on." Zeref scrolled down through the messages, which were still coming in as he spoke. "It seems he was there during an attack as well. He thought he heard something screech, and he swears he's heard the sound before... in a dream..."

He trailed off and lifted wide eyes to Natsu.

"Ask him what the dream was about," the Dragon Slayer suggested.

Zeref typed out the message and they waited with baited breath for the reply.

"He says that not a lot happened in it. He was just wandering through this strange wilderness—like a forest with crystal trees and silver sand."

As the words left his mouth, a shiver ran up Zeref's spine. His fingers hovered over the phone's smooth, brightly lit screen, but before he could decide on a response, a slew of other messages arrived—these from the other four club members. Apparently, Yuri wasn't the only one who had been experiencing dreams of quiet, surreal landscapes of rock and sand and crystal. It could have just been a bizarre coincidence except for one thing. At least one of them—Zeref was too shocked to register who exactly—had glimpsed a crimson dragon in the sky.

Yuri also wasn't the only one who had witnessed an attack. Mavis and her friend had been the ones to call an ambulance for a woman who had collapsed on the corner by their favorite breakfast shop, and all of them had felt as though they were being watched by something at some point or other in the last few days. Of course, that last could have been paranoia talking.

Zeref returned his attention to the map, inspecting the red circle clusters through new eyes. The pattern was easy to spot now that he knew what to look for.

"Most of the attacks have happened close to where each of them lives. There were two incidents close to our school too. I think that strengthens the theory that it's diet is energy, only instead of targeting places with higher concentrations of energy, it's targeting people."

"So then why aren't there more attacks around here?" Natsu wondered aloud.

"Well, my guess is that it's because you're here. You did kill two of those creatures already. Actually, that's probably why the attacks have also mostly been in more narrow places."

Places that would have been difficult to access for a giant, flying beast.

Which brought them back to the plan.

At least Zeref wouldn't have to contend with a crowd for the creature's attention.

.

"I'm not sure about this plan of yours," Tomi said, observing the two boys across the dining table the following morning. "Intentionally making yourself bait for an invisible monster seems... well, are you sure there isn't a safer way?"

"This is the best way to minimize potential damage," Zeref assured him. "And even though I won't be able to see it, I'll be able to sense it, so it's not as crazy as it sounds."

The writer glanced at Natsu for confirmation.

"And you agree?"

The Dragon Slayer gave his bacon and scrambled eggs a dark look then sighed and said, "I'm not happy about it, but yeah."

"Are we talking about that creature that tried to eat us in that dream place?" Riana asked, returning to her own seat at the table with a bottle of syrup to accompany her pancakes.

"I believe so," her husband replied.

"Then I say leave them to do what they have to do. They'll be fine."

Tomi stared at her, mouth agape. Usually, she was the one who worried about them all. This sudden change of heart on her part put an abrupt halt to his questions—at least for the time being.

After their son had left for school and Natsu had set out to scout the city, Tomi regarded his wife with raised eyebrows.

"I told you before," she said, not waiting for him to ask what was obviously on his mind. "The two of them were the ones who looked after me in that strange world. You didn't see Natsu fight and you didn't see how calm and collected Zeref was, even when we were looking down the monster's throat and thinking that it might swallow us whole. If he could be that level-headed then, I believe that he'll be okay. _They'll_ be okay."

And her conviction was enough to put an end to that conversation.

.

The dragon circled high over the city before landing atop the tallest of the available skyscrapers, a massive shadow against the night hardly noticed by the people below. Despite his concerns over the upcoming battle, Natsu was fascinated by the myriad of strange costumes and decorations flooding the streets. There were definitely strong themes of death, blood, monsters and _magic_. It wasn't only children either. Plenty of adults had gotten into the spirit of the thing, caught up perhaps by the atmosphere.

It was easy to pick his partner out from the masses, although his plain, dark clothes made him fade into the background of all the demons, ghosts, and magicians. It was kind of funny to think that the only real magic user down there tonight was also the most ordinary looking person on the street, but the dragon wasn't really in the mood for amusement.

Natsu knew he was being overprotective, but knowing wasn't enough to make him tone it down. Every time he closed his eyes, his mind presented him with images of those last horrible days near the end of the war. At the time, he hadn't thought of what was happening as a war, but a war was what it was. Dark wizards fought wizards and non-wizards alike, and the line between allies and enemies hadn't always been that clear. A few wizards from their own side, drawn by the vision of a world ruled by magic, had defected to the Dark Guilds, and at least one Dark Guild had turned over a new leaf and become legit, brought to their senses by the ever-increasing number of casualties. It was the casualties that Natsu found himself dwelling on now, the dead and the injured and the dying.

All of them had developed a new respect for Wendy. As one of the only wizards in the world who could still use healing magic, the Sky Dragon Slayer had quickly become a leader in the loose organization of healers who took charge of those requiring medical attention. Out of all of them, she was the one who spent the most time with those too damaged to be saved, the one who held their hands when they passed on and listened to their last words. All of them had been amazed by how the girl—no, the young woman—managed to stay centered through it all, kept her head straight on her shoulders despite the pain tearing her up every time she failed to save a life so that she could keep on trying. Most of Wendy's battles had been fought in medical tents and village hospitals rather than on battlefields, but it was generally agreed that hers were the hardest battles in the entire war. She had come out of the conflict taller, older, stronger, more confident in herself but also more tired.

Unlike their fellow Dragon Slayer, Natsu and Gajeel had spent most of their time fighting on the front lines. Unsurprisingly, they saw more than their fair share of mangled bodies and blood. Compared to that, Zeref had hardly seemed wounded at all. There hadn't been any blood or other signs of external injury, yet even so, Natsu had known even before laying eyes on him that something was wrong. You didn't spend that much time fighting without picking up a sort of sixth sense for these things. That didn't mean he had believed it though, and he went on refusing to believe it until he had the other wizard in his arms and could feel beyond the shadow of a doubt the frailty that hadn't been there that morning.

Sometimes, Natsu wondered if the other boy had known what would happen to him, had known what he would do later that day and how dangerous it would be. On some level, probably. Zeref seldom did anything without extensive planning and contemplation. But as for the risk... Natsu doubted it. The Black Wizard—and all the rest of them perhaps—had grown far too accustomed to his seeming immortality. Even though he could die, it was so incredibly unlikely that someone would be able to kill him that they'd all just taken it for granted that he would be all right. They needed him to be all right because there was so much that he still had to do, so much that he could do and would do to help them fix this mess that the mad dark wizards of the world had gotten them all dragged into. In a weird way, all of them had come to rely on him, even the very, very select few that knew who he actually was. Natsu had been glad for him because he knew how much it meant to him to be included and to be part of something good, but in retrospect, he wondered if they had relied on the dark-haired wizard a bit too much. Zeref took all his responsibilities so seriously, and he'd so often tried to do things by himself.

That was probably why no one had noticed the Black Wizard wander off on his own that day.

With great effort, Natsu relaxed his grip on the edge of the roof before the concrete crumbled completely. His claws had left deep gouges in the roof, but hopefully, nobody would notice. This windy rooftop probably wasn't a popular destination anyway.

Something about the atmosphere tonight was making it difficult to pull his mind out of the past, but he couldn't be thinking about that right now. It tended to make him angry and frustrated and violent, and this city wouldn't be able to handle that. There were too many people here, too many buildings, and no room to let off steam.

.

Zeref glanced around at the colorfully costumed multitudes, hoping the other magic club members would hold up their end of the bargain. They had cornered him at school earlier that day wanting to know why he had asked for information about the coma patients. They had all seen the television news footage on the bizarre event in the underground mall and suspected that the cause was supernatural. Zeref had been in a hurry to get home, however, and put them off with a promise to explain later and an assurance that he would deal with the problem. Of course they had wanted to help, but they had reluctantly agreed not to get involved when he just as reluctantly elaborated that he would not be alone, which had led to them wheedling another promise out of him to introduce the person he was working with. In exchange, they promised to keep him informed on their locations throughout the evening, not to use any magic until this problem was resolved, and not to all meet up together in one place.

Just imagining the upcoming explanations made his stomach turn over with unease, but he wasn't entirely sure why. Perhaps it was just that things would change again, or maybe it was that it would mean letting them into a part of his life that he had hitherto kept as a closely guarded secret. Telling his parents had been one thing, something he had thought he would have to do sooner or later. But other people? Well, at least he had some time to prepare himself and get himself into the right mindset.

Despite his best efforts, his gaze wandered up to the looming shadow atop a nearby skyscraper. The lights down here were too bright and the sky above too dark for him to see the dragon clearly, but he could picture him in his mind—wings unfolded in preparation of flight and green eyes narrowed and unblinking.

Somehow, thinking of the dragon dispelled much of his unease. It always had, even back when he was nine and believed that the dragon was only a dream.

Which brought him back to something else that had been on his mind.

When this was over, Zeref thought, he needed to have a long talk with Natsu. He had the feeling that that talk would dredge up some old and unpleasant memories, but he needed to understand. He wanted—needed—to understand Natsu, not just the Natsu that talked and laughed with him on the dream world plateau but the Natsu that had torn that attacking beast apart and left a molten scar across the desert. He knew some of the story from the conversation they had had when he was twelve, but that was a long time ago and they hadn't really talked of it since—both because Natsu disliked the subject intensely and because it hadn't been especially important to Zeref. It was the past, after all, and even though it still had undeniable influences on his life as proven by his childhood nightmares, it was—for the most part—all behind him. It wasn't until recent events that he had realized how important it still was to Natsu. For Natsu, it was far more than "just" the past. Instead, the past was somehow tangled with the present—and with the future too.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket—once, twice, and then a third time. It looked like the others hadn't forgotten their promises. Let's see, Mavis and Zera lived in an apartment complex not too far from the shopping center where he was now, and they were currently passing out candy together there. As for the three boys, one was at a Halloween party, another was helping out at a children's carnival, and the last was at a scary story reading event at the library. So if the members of the magic club were attracting the creature, Zeref had the best chance of encountering it exactly where he was. Now to give it a little help.

Zeref pocketed his phone once more with his left hand and called a light into his right hand, closing his fingers around the glow so that if anyone saw, he or she could assume he was holding something more substantial than a spark of energy. Flashlights, lanterns, and other things that glowed in the dark were common enough in the crowd tonight. The spell was a small one and took nearly no effort to maintain, but using any spell was enough to help broadcast his presence. Besides, he needed to conserve all the energy he could for what would come if—when—the creature showed itself.

.

Crouched atop the skyscraper, the dragon shifted restlessly, a low, nearly inaudible growl rumbling in his throat. It was drawing closer. He could sense it as a familiar disturbance in the atmosphere and it made him itch to leap—to attack. He had to remind himself that doing so would leave the street below in ruins; there just wasn't the space for it with all the buildings so close together and the people and cars taking up all remaining patches of pavement.

Zeref's words to him from the evening before kept replaying in his head.

" _If you can't let me do this without getting this upset, how will I ever be able to go to Earth Land and go on jobs with you there?"_

Was that what Natsu wanted? Yes, he'd never said so aloud, but it was very much what he wanted, although at the same time, hearing Zeref confirm that that was what he wanted too had invoked mixed feelings in him. Up until then, it had only been a dream, a future plan, something he was aiming for but that wasn't yet in his grasp. Now that it was a very real possibility, it also presented very real problems and consequences that he had to consider.

Zeref was right. Compared to a lot of what guild wizards dealt with on a routine basis, this job wasn't that dangerous. The enemy wasn't malicious, just hungry, and even though it was strong, it wasn't especially clever.

The dragon exhaled and a puff of steam rose into the air, lingering for a moment before the breeze dispersed it.

That didn't stop him from feeling edgy and restless though, and it wasn't just because of what they were currently doing. He just... didn't want to think about the other reasons. This reason was much less complicated.

Down on the sidewalk, Zeref paused on the street corner to wait for the walk light to change from red to green. Natsu could tell he had sensed the creature too by the tilt of his head and the tense set of his shoulders. After crossing the street, Zeref turned left, heading out of the heart of the shopping district. He hesitated a few stores down—probably to check if the creature was following him—before continuing onward once he had confirmed that it was.

Right, what Natsu ought to do right now was focus and be patient. He could be good at patience when he needed to be.

.

As the crowds thinned around him, Zeref's nerves began to jangle with anxious energy. The only real fight he had ever participated in was that one in the silver desert. This time, he was more prepared, but the opponent had more tricks as well. Keeping track of the creature's approach while avoiding running into any cars or people was also proving to be harder than he had anticipated. The thing was moving erratically, coming closer then swerving away only to return again from a slightly different angle.

 _Make up your mind_ , he thought. The wait was making him nervous, whittling away at his initial confidence, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to be prey.

Wait, why did it stop?

Frowning, Zeref stopped too. It hadn't changed its mind about him, had it? Did it not find him as attractive a target as he had thought?

But he needn't have worried. A second after the question had crossed his mind, the creature began to move again—straight towards him this time and accelerating as it came. Zeref's own heart rate picked up in response, and he had to force himself to remain still until it got much closer before breaking into a run, passing into one of the quieter residential districts. An old woman making her way home on the other side of the street glanced his way as he bolted past, but he paid her no mind. Somewhere else close by, a dog started barking, the sounds deep and edged with gravel.

The presence behind him lunged, and he threw himself to the side to avoid it before darting down an alley. If he had had the time to look behind him, he would have been treated to the unusual sight of an empty metal trashcan getting crushed into something resembling a squashed soda can by invisible jaws. Even though he didn't see this, he heard it happen, and he wondered if its diet had made the creature more corporal. It was only in this attack and the other recent one down by the subway that the beast had left physical evidence of its presence. That... was probably bad news, but as long as he didn't let it get close enough to him to test this theory, it wouldn't matter if it was true.

Behind him, the creature abandoned the trashcan and charged into the alley, scraping flecks of concrete and brick dust from the walls as it went. Zeref emerged into a deserted backstreet and waited just long enough to make sure it was still on his tail before taking off again, following the route he had planned out on his mental map. He would have to turn right at the next intersection, and then he could cut through the convenience store's back lot towards the school. The track and field area was mostly just open space with plenty of room for a dragon and a monster. It wasn't Zeref's first choice because the chances of someone seeing them was high, but hey, who was going to believe it?

Quite suddenly, Zeref found himself laughing, and it was a totally inappropriate reaction to the situation but he couldn't help it. He couldn't believe he was doing this. It was so bizarre and crazy, and anyone who saw him would probably think he was insane, but at the same time, it felt so _normal_ , so exactly like what he was supposed to be doing.

The laugh turned into a squeak as the creature made another bid for him. He veered left only just in time, and something sharp and bony clipped his right side. Pain burned across his ribs, but he ignored it, turning to face the spot where he judged the creature to be for just long enough to throw a spell he had designed for this purpose. The energy left his hand in a wave and he felt it connect, could hear the crash and screech of outrage as something he couldn't see was thrown back by several meters, but otherwise, nothing else was damaged. The magic passed right through all the inanimate objects that had been in its way, leaving no sign whatsoever that anything extraordinary had occurred. Good. At least he wouldn't have to feel personally responsible for any property damage. Now he'd better stop letting his mind wander and get going or he'd have a very angry dragon down here taking matters into his own claws and destroying everything.

He could definitely hear the creature now even over his own gasping breath, its heavy footfalls nonetheless moving with incredible speed across pavement that wasn't entirely happy about the weight or the force. It was mad now and making its displeasure known with a rumble in its throat that reverberated through the ground and up through the soles of his shoes. Out of the corners of his eyes, Zeref thought he saw the gleam of streetlights off crystalline shell plating. It was transparent like it belonged to a ghost, but he was positive he hadn't imagined it.

The creature wasn't invisible anymore.

Well, guess it was a good thing that it was Halloween after all.

.

Whoever owned this skyscraper was going to be very unhappy next time they visited the roof with the chunks of concrete he had removed from the parapet, but Natsu couldn't care about that right now.

He could see the creature now, damn it. It was like it was taunting him! And what was Zeref doing down there, getting sidetracked at a time like this? It had almost gotten him, and Natsu was too far away to tell if he'd been hurt.

Snakelike, green eyes tracked the slim, darkly clad form of the wizard as he raced through the empty parking lot behind a convenience store, followed a split second later by a beast that seemed constructed of smoke and glass. Their speculations had been correct and it was smaller than the two beasts they had encountered before, but it was stronger and more agile—Natsu could sense it. After all, this was a densely populated city and it had been eating well.

Zeref ducked around a car parked halfway on the sidewalk and dashed up to the side gate of his school—which was locked. He was prepared for that though, and Natsu sensed the flare of magic while, behind him, the car was shunted aside accompanied by the jarring screech of protesting metal, the doors on one side smashed inward by the impact. Then the black iron gate slid aside and Zeref was through, sprinting past the cluster of classroom buildings towards the neatly trimmed rectangle of grass on the other side.

 _Finally_!

The dragon waited impatiently until the creature had barreled out onto the field in pursuit of its prey before launching himself from the rooftop. It felt good to fly again, but he wasn't in the mood to enjoy it. Instead, he wheeled in the direction of the high school campus, folded his wings, and dove.

.

Zeref drove the creature back away from him with another spell and took a few steps backward, not taking his eyes off the creature. It shook its head, looking almost bewildered.

It had probably never had such a tough meal, Zeref thought, and it was about to get a lot tougher because it was at that moment that the dragon dropped out of the sky.

The creature tried to turn and burrow underground at the last moment, but Natsu was faster. He seized the creature by its glittering, rocklike shell and spared a moment to feel relieved that it was physical enough to grasp before wrenching it from the earth. It shrieked and fought, but was nonetheless dragged skyward, and—in the blink of an eye—both dragon and ghostly beast disappeared.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **AN:** Thanks for reading, reviewing, etc:)

Yes, the tone does change a lot in these latter chapters. It kind of annoyed me when I was working on it, actually, because I was enjoying the slightly detached surreal-ness of the early chapters. Still, I know you can't really write an entire story that way (or not a long story, at any rate), and it works out well how the tone reflects the shift in the story from dream into more concrete reality.

 **.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

13.

Zeref ran all the way back home and had to pause for a moment at the top of the stairs to rest his aching legs. He desperately wanted to know what was happening in the dream world, but his heart was pounding in his chest and he was way too high on adrenaline to even doze. Why hadn't he ever thought of making a spell to put himself to sleep?

Tomi opened the front door before he had found his keys and he all but fell through it.

"Is Mother home?"

"She just got back, but I think she said she'll be heading back to the hospital after she's gotten something to eat."

Zeref thanked him and scrambled past him.

"Mother," he said urgently, stumbling into the kitchen. "Do you have anything that could help me fall asleep quickly?"

Riana pressed the "start" button on the microwave and turned to look at her son with raised eyebrows.

"This isn't going to become a habit, is it?"

"No, I just—Natsu's there and he might be fighting, and I want to get there too but I'm too awake to sleep."

Riana raised a hand to stall his rushed explanations. Orange bottle in the medicine cabinet with the dark blue lid, the pills should be small, round, and pink. Just take one and take some time to calm down and clear your mind, okay? _Don't_ take more than one."

"Thank you, and I won't."

He started down the hall towards the medicine cabinet then turned and ran back to get a glass of water. He found the sleeping pills where his mother had said they would be, downed one, and then shut himself in his room with the lights off.

Even so, it felt like an eternity before sleep finally claimed him.

.

Zeref sat on the edge of the plateau, alternating between fidgeting and scanning the horizon. It felt like forever since he had last been here—since he had last sat on this mountaintop waiting for Natsu. It was morning here right now, and the pallid, predawn light painted the mountain range in pastel shades of blue and gray and even a touch of pink. The view was breathtaking and serene, and at another time, Zeref would have very much enjoyed it. But in this situation, the lonely mountain range presented one giant obstacle that he couldn't believe he had forgotten about.

He had never needed a way to get off this plateau before. He had never wanted to go anywhere alone, and when Natsu was around, they flew. Looking down the sheer side of the mountain and the jagged peaks of shorter mountains below, it was obvious that climbing down was not an option. This was not the time to test whether falling a couple hundred thousand feet in this particular dream would kill him. Anyway, even if he did find some way down, the surrounding landscape was always changing and he had no idea where to find the desert that Natsu had planned to leave the creature.

Zeref sighed, resting his elbows on his knees. At least waiting here was better than waiting in his room. He really needed to expand his repertoire of practical spells for traveling and going on adventures. No single person could excel at everything though; both time and energy were limited resources, so he should be focusing on a single type or set of types of magic that would both be useful on the road and match his own skills, preferences, and personality.

This line of contemplation kept his mind occupied until his ears finally, finally caught the distant thunder of giant wings.

Zeref scrambled to his feet as the dragon landed.

"I thought I sensed you arrive," Natsu said, folding his wings and peering down at the boy with a dragon's equivalent of raised eyebrows.

"I forgot I had no way to reach you once I got here," Zeref admitted, sounding just a bit sheepish. "So what happened?"

"It decided to be smart and ran away as soon as I dropped it." Natsu snorted a little derisively. "By the way, I found a sort of space distortion in the desert that's a lot like what happens when I shift worlds only the disturbances I cause don't stick around like that. It's not visible, but it's got a unique sort of scent. I'm sure that's how the creature got through, and I think it's where you and your mother got here before. We're going to have to find a way to close it up."

"Do you think we need to go look at it now?"

"We can if you want, although for now, I've moved a couple boulders to the area to make it harder to get to. Personally, I think it's going to be important for us to bring that bottle of sand your parents have back here. That's how all this started after all."

"That's true." Zeref hesitated, glancing in the direction Natsu had arrived from then back up at the dragon himself. "Before we do that, can we... talk for awhile?"

It was a perfectly ordinary request, but the tone of his voice made the dragon pause. He hesitated, turning his head to examine the boy through one slanted, green eye, and then sighed and settled down upon the plateau.

"Sure, let's talk. I suppose there are some things that have got to be said sooner or later."

He would rather it was later, but later had a nasty way of sneaking up on you when you thought it had forgotten about you and it could cause the greatest inconvenience. Better to get everything out in the open now.

Minutes later, they were both arranged comfortably in their usual spot upon the plateau, close to the edge so they could survey the landscape below but not so close that Zeref ran the risk of falling over the edge. Neither of them knew where best to start or what exactly this talk was meant to be about, so the seconds ticked by in silence. Five minutes became ten, and tens gathered together to become half an hour.

Finally, Natsu said, "You know, the fact that your friends end up here sometimes when they sleep makes me think that maybe there are a lot of people with magical potential in your world after all. Like the ghosts we see here from time to time. That means you don't have to keep agonizing about whether or not it was okay to teach other people how to use magic. Someone else would probably have discovered it sooner or later."

"I suppose that's very likely." Zeref winced at the thought of those friends and what they expected from him next time they met. "They want a full explanation of what happened, and they've also demanded to meet you."

"Well, an explanation is only fair. They did do their part after all. I can arrange to be absent if you don't want them to meet me though."

It was tempting, but, "No, we'd better not. They'll have to meet you sometime, especially if I start disappearing now and then in the future, and two of them have seen you already."

There was a brief pause then Natsu cleared his throat and spoke. "You want to come to Fiore with me?"

"I do."

"What about school?"

"It's not going to be right away. I'm going to finish high school and go to college. But I don't want to wait until I'm done with all that before I visit. I think I might want to live there. I like the sound of life there, but I think it would be best to have short trips there first so I can get used to how things work and make sure."

He'd expected Natsu to be ecstatic about this. He'd always suspected deep down that that was what the dragon really hoped would happen in the future, even though neither of them had openly discussed the matter before.

Instead, the dragon lowered his head to Zeref's eye level and fixed him with a solemn stare.

"The thought of living there with you makes me happy," the boy explained, thrown off balance by the dragon's grim tension. "I thought you'd be happy about it too."

"I am," Natsu assured him, sensing his growing distress. "It's just... I need to tell you some things before you decide any of that."

He hesitated.

Zeref said nothing. His stomach churned with sudden trepidation, and he pressed himself closer against the dragon's side, waiting.

"If you come to Fiore," the dragon finally started, words slow and precise as though he disliked each and every syllable. "Some people may recognize you or think that you are... someone that you're not. They might... want to hurt you or say things that will turn other people against you if we're not careful how we approach the situation. It's also possible that other people will come after you for other reasons. You see... I never told you before, but you weren't a member of my guild. Actually, you weren't any kind of guild wizard at all."

The implications of his words finally clicked together and Zeref said, "I was a dark wizard."

The dragon's tail lashed in agitation.

"Yes, but it's not just that. You were one of the most well known wizards throughout history, and a lot of people believe that you were instrumental in how magic developed in our world, that a lot of different types of magic originated from work that you did and things that you discovered. Time travel, for instance, although you abandoned that project pretty early on I think. What you were most famous for, though... was magic for creating living things. That's where a lot of the demons in my world came from."

That didn't sound good. In fact, it sounded kind of bad.

"Was I... a criminal then?"

"No, I wouldn't say that," Natsu replied without hesitation, and his certainty made Zeref relax a bit. "A lot of tragedies came about because of things that you had done or creatures that you had created, but for the most part, I don't think your intentions were bad. Irresponsible sometimes and maybe selfish sometimes, but no more so than people often are when they're trying to figure things out. And you carried around a lot of guilt because of it all. Hell, some tragedies were really just accidents—things being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know those nightmares you told me about where everything around you just died? That really did happen, and it wasn't a one-time thing. You told me once that it was a curse, and honestly, I'm surprised you hadn't gone crazy because of it long before. You were more than four hundred when we met."

"Four hundred?" Zeref repeated in disbelief. "But that's impossible... isn't it?"

The dragon shrugged.

"I think you'll find that the world is full of strange and impossible things. You looked quite a lot like you do now, like the curse you were under had frozen you in time. Being cursed made you immortal among other things, and a lot of the things you did, you did because you were trying to die."

" _I was so angry with myself for letting it happen, and maybe a little upset with you too_ ," Natsu had said what felt like ages ago, the only other time they had spoken of such serious matters, " _Your will to live was always a bit weak, and I can't help but wonder if things would have gone differently if we'd met a bit earlier and had more time._ "

And that was it really, Zeref realized with sudden clarity, why Natsu found it so difficult to sit back and let him do potentially dangerous things by himself. It wasn't nearly as simple as worry for his safety or concerns about his ability to look after himself. Instead, the dragon wizard's borderline obsessive protectiveness was all tangled up with his own doubts. It wasn't just grief or guilt—not entirely, but it _was_ uncertainty and maybe a bit of anger. Uncertainty about exactly what his partner had been thinking before he died and anger that the dark wizard maybe, just maybe, had given up somewhere deep down where such things made a difference. Uncertainty about whether there was anything Natsu could have—should have—done differently. If somehow, he hadn't done enough to make him want to live, or if that would even have mattered in the end. Perhaps it really had just been an unavoidable sacrifice.

It would have been easier if there had been some villain to blame.

It was strange, Zeref thought, that after everything Natsu had just told him, it was this last point that stuck in his mind. Of course it was worrying to learn that he might be subject to some quite serious persecution in Fiore should things go wrong, but he was fairly confident that they could find ways around that. This other matter was a lot less straightforward and a lot harder to understand, especially since he had no recollections of living through that history. He would have liked to be able to reassure him, to tell the dragon that he would absolutely have fought as hard as he could to stay with him. But the fact was that he couldn't know for sure, especially in light of what he'd just been told, and a lie now would mean nothing. They would just have to live with that uncertainty.

One thing Zeref did know for sure, however, and he focused on that now.

"Natsu, I realize that a lot has happened, much of which I can never completely understand. I understand that there might be problems, that people might not like me and that I might get hurt. But I've made the decisions I've made because I want to stay with you, and you need to believe that. You told me that you love me. You should know that that makes me incredibly happy, and that I'm quite sure that I love you too—for exactly who you are now and who you have been to me in the years since we met." Zeref paused, just a little bit embarrassed by saying such things out loud despite the seriousness of the moment. But this was important and he felt that these were things that he had to say—things that Natsu had to hear. "I like and want to be with you. And even though I can't say with a hundred percent certainty, I believe that at least part of me must have wanted it back then too, and very much so, or else I wouldn't have asked you to look for me."

After all, Zeref couldn't imagine wanting to spend more than one life with someone he hadn't come to love very much indeed. Someone he believed he would love again if given the chance.

The dragon looked away, letting his own gaze travel across the horizon. The grave atmosphere made the brilliant blue of the sky feel fake somehow, even as the sunlight made the shadows of the past seem less dark.

"I guess that's true."

"I'm not generally an impulsive person," Zeref pointed out, a hint of amusement entering his voice. "Unlike a certain somebody."

Natsu snorted. "Yeah, well, you'd be surprised how much more I think things through now than I used to. You could say that I've learned the value of long term planning."

He went silent again, possibly thinking over what Zeref had said or trying to reconcile those words with his own memories. Whatever it was, he seemed to reach some kind of conclusion, and when he spoke again, he sounded much more like himself.

"Well, if we talk more about your magic, I can start keeping an eye out for job requests that might suit us. Before that though, my friends will want to meet you. I haven't really told them anything about you, so they're dying of curiosity."

Zeref relaxed and smiled, relieved by the return of his partner's good humor.

"I remember they mentioned that in their letter."

It felt like ages ago that Natsu had brought him that letter. Everything afterward had happened so fast.

The dragon shifted away from him before rising to his feet and unfolding his wings.

"Guess we might as well get this over with in one go. I'll just go get the sand and then pick you up to see the portal."

"All right. I brought a shell fragment home from here too that we should probably bring back. It's in the top drawer of my desk. And Natsu..."

The dragon stopped and glanced back down at him.

"I promise that I'll make every effort to look after myself."

He couldn't quite decipher the expression on the dragon's face, but after a second, he nodded.

"That's good to know."

Then he launched himself into the sky and Zeref settled down to try and put together a sleep spell.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

14.

After the tumultuous night that they had had, both of them found something therapeutic about the long flight from the plateau to the desert, made longer still by the circuitous route Natsu chose to take since they were no longer in a hurry. There was something soothing about feeling the wind rush past them as they watched the world fall away beneath their feet. The sight was almost dizzying, and after a moment, Zeref shut his eyes and pressed himself against the dragon's neck, soaking in the warmth that emanated from his scales. Everything about flying like this was familiar, and there was just something comforting about that familiarity.

For a few precious moments, they could forget about the past and stop thinking about the future. Maybe it couldn't last, but they would take what peace they could get.

Neither of them spoke again until they landed before the cluster of ebony black boulders that Natsu had used to block off the rift in space. The dragon set the boy down on the sand and then set about rolling the boulders aside so they could get a better look at the problem.

At first, Zeref couldn't see anything at all, just sand and stone against a gray-blue sky. He turned his head this way and that, trying to find any trace of something out of the ordinary. Finally, he noticed that if he directed his focus at someplace else, he could catch a shimmer out of the corners of his eyes like a heat distortion in the air.

"It's easier to smell than to see," Natsu said, returning to his side and peering down at the distortion as well. "I'm not sure what we can do about it though. I was hoping that if we brought back the sand, it would just fix itself, but it doesn't seem like it's happening."

Zeref took the bottle of sand and the fragment of shell crystal from his pocket and held them up. The sight of them brought back the unpleasant twist of guilt he'd felt in his stomach back when they'd first figured out what was attacking people.

"This... this is all right, isn't it? What we're doing. That we keep coming here."

"You're not blaming yourself for everything that's happened, are you?"

"It only happened because I brought that sand home from here."

"By accident. We're fixing it, and we know better now. We just need to be more careful in the future."

Zeref thought about this then nodded. "You're right."

And the important thing right now was to focus on patching up this accidental gateway.

Zeref took a few steps forward and walked around the distortion, careful not to get too close.

"You said you use something like this to travel from world to world?"

"Something like it, yeah."

"Can you describe it?"

"Hmmm." The dragon sat back on his haunches and cocked his head in thought. "I'll try, but I've never been good at explaining these things..."

It took them the better part of two hours to close the rift, and even after they had done it, neither of them were sure how they had managed to make it happen. They scratched their heads over that dilemma for another few minutes before deciding that they were both tired and ready to go home.

.

Zeref woke up in his own bed feeling exhausted, which was just bizarre considering he had technically been sleeping. Then again, he had also been using a lot of magic trying to fix the rip in space, and that had to take a toll on him. He was also starving, another byproduct of expending so much energy.

He dragged himself out from under the covers and stumbled out of his room to open the front door for Natsu. The intensity of the sunlight seeping through the window curtains told him that it was well past midmorning, which meant he was seriously late for school. Even if he went to class though, he didn't think he had the energy to pay attention.

"You're back."

Zeref jumped, startled by the unexpected sound of his father's voice.

Tomi quirked an eyebrow at him from where he stood in the open doorway of his office.

"I called to tell the school that you're sick. By the looks of you, I might not have been lying."

"I'm just tired," his son assured him, continuing on to the front door. "How are the people at the hospital?"

"Your mother said they're doing fine. I assume you and Natsu dealt with the problem?"

"I think so. There... haven't been any new attacks, have there?"

"No."

Zeref let out a sigh of relief and leaned against the frame of the open door. It was several more minutes before Natsu appeared from down the hall, stifling a yawn.

The first thing he said when he reached them was, "I don't suppose there's anything to eat? I'm starving."

They ended up finishing an entire box of cereal between them, although Natsu did most of the eating while Zeref almost fell asleep in his bowl.

"Maybe you should just go lie back down," Natsu said, examining him with concern from the other side of the kitchen table.

Zeref mumbled an agreement and returned to his room only to lie awake in the semidarkness listening to the distant rumble of the city. He had basically completed his first official assignment as a wizard. It wasn't a guild request or anything, but the surrounding circumstances made it feel much the same. He wasn't sure if it had been a success though, or how he ought to feel about what they had accomplished. It was more like they were fixing a mistake that they hadn't even known they had made. All these confused thoughts ran around in his head and made him yearn for sleep even more.

He really needed to work on that sleep spell.

He opened his eyes when he heard the door of his room open. Natsu stood in the doorway, regarding him with concern.

"I thought I'd check on you. You didn't really eat anything, and you still look exhausted. Food and rest are the best ways of getting your energy levels back up. Food works really well for me, but it looks like you'd have an easier time with just rest."

Except that rest was proving to be elusive at the moment.

"Are you going to sleep now then?" he asked.

Natsu shrugged. "Probably, yeah. I feel way better after that brunch, but some sleep would still be helpful. The blankets your mother left on the couch for me are real nice."

Zeref propped himself up on his elbows to look at him. "We could set up an extra mattress for you in here. It's hard to sleep knowing you're just out in the living room. I'm... used to being able to talk. I don't know why you've insisted on sleeping on the couch."

"Why?" Natsu repeated in disbelief. "You're really asking me _why_?"

In a few quick strides, he was at the side of the bed and leaning over its surprised occupant. Natsu grabbed both his shoulders and pushed him down onto the mattress before crushing their mouths together. Zeref gasped and his partner seized the opening to deepen the kiss. It was harsh, possessive, and demanding, and Zeref was startled by the jolt of sensation that crashed through him. His hands came up to grasp at Natsu's shirt, and a sound escaped his throat that seemed caught somewhere between a squeak and a moan. He felt Natsu tense at the sound and the grip on his shoulders became almost painful for a moment, then the wizard pulled away and straightened.

Zeref blinked up at the ceiling for a second, disoriented and breathless. When he'd recollected himself, he met Natsu's gaze then looked away again, flustered.

"Oh."

"Yes, 'oh'," Natsu said, amused. "It's amazing how easy it is for you to overlook the simple things."

"It's not something I think about much," Zeref said a little defensively.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't. You've got more important things to think about."

"That's right."

Natsu chuckled, and Zeref wondered if he'd been teasing him. Honestly though, he knew it was unusual for his age, but sex ranked pretty low on his list of priorities. Until recently, there had never been anyone he cared to be close to.

"Just so long as you remember that I do think about it and I want you quite badly, so if the idea makes you uncomfortable right now, I'll stay in the living room." The amusement faded from Natsu's expression and he added, "Besides, I'm afraid I'll wake up and forget to think before I act."

With that, he was gone, shutting the door behind him and leaving Zeref even more awake than he had been before. He sat up and stared at the closed door, but made no move to get up or go after the other wizard. His heart was still beating way too fast and the room felt too warm yet a little cold too.

It sounded like Natsu had ditched the idea of sleep and gone into the kitchen for more food. Zeref could hear him moving about, looking through cupboards and probably trying to remember how to operate some of the technology.

Zeref pulled the blanket up around his shoulders and forced himself to go back over what had just happened, trying to untangle how he had actually felt about the event from the mess of surprise and embarrassment. He recalled the look in the dragon wizard's eyes, dark and intense with emotion, and a shiver ran down his spine. It had not been unpleasant. Far from it. In fact, he had quite liked it, and part of him hadn't wanted Natsu to stop. But... well, Natsu was right and he didn't think he was comfortable at this time with much more than that. Not quite.

All right, so then what now? It didn't make sense to pretend that nothing had been said.

Ugh, why did life have to be so complicated?

He was still trying to sort all this out when the doorbell rang, and he was so distracted by his thoughts that he didn't realize right away that it was a short school day and classes should have let out early.

Zeref opened the door to be greeted by five familiar faces that he had rather hoped not to see again so soon.

"We heard you were sick," Mavis said brightly. "So we all decided that we should come and visit you."

She peered over his shoulder into the apartment and caught sight of Natsu standing in the kitchen doorway watching them. She smiled and waved.

"You must be the friend he promised to introduce us to. I'm Mavis, and it's a pleasure to meet you."

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **AN:** Actually, I will be doing a section in Fiore later in this story, so there will be some interactions between Zeref and the Fiore group. I can try to include more history, but I'm not sure how much. It'll depend on what fits, since the tone should get a lot brighter. I kind of want to focus more on how the kingdom has changed in the aftermath of the war.

.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

15.

Natsu ate his way through half a loaf of bread while he observed the newcomers, the towering stack of toast on his plate drawing more than a few amazed glances. To be honest, he wasn't actually hungry anymore, not really, and the food was just a way of distracting himself from other, more dangerous thoughts. He hadn't quite intended what had happened earlier, and another part of him was uneasy too—of the boy knowing how tentative his self control actually was these days.

That was the problem with handling everything by yourself, he supposed. On some days, he just wanted to go and tear a mountain down or something, except he had done that once and felt very guilty about it afterwards. It was stupid to horde all his thoughts and memories about his partner and refuse to discuss any of it with his friends even though they were willing to listen, but he just hadn't wanted to share any of it with them. In fact, the only person he wanted to share that history with was currently sitting in front of him trying to figure out what to tell his classmates.

The Dragon Slayer felt torn between wanting the easy understanding they had had in the past that could only come from truly knowing one another and worrying about how a Zeref who had grown up in a much more peaceful time would perceive him. Then again, there had been that fight with the desert monster and the incident in the underground shopping center where he'd literally dragged the other wizard away from the scene, so perhaps Zeref already had some idea. The look that had flickered through those dark eyes during their recent conversation on the dream world plateau seemed to support this notion and made Natsu wonder if he was just over thinking things, that perhaps Zeref understood a lot more than Natsu was giving him credit for. The dark-haired wizard might be young, but he was wise too.

"So your name is Natsu," Mavis said, turning where she sat on the couch to look over at him.

Natsu still found it bizarre how he recognized more than half of these people sitting and standing about the apartment's modest living room. Sure, they looked a bit different—younger, for one thing, but they weren't so different that he couldn't match up names with faces.

"Where are you from?" she asked. "I'm positive that you don't go to our school."

Natsu glanced at Zeref, debating with himself how to answer. The other wizard was sitting on the very edge of the armchair and looked somewhat dismayed by this turn of events, but then he had promised his classmates that he would introduce them. Natsu couldn't see any harm in telling them at least a portion of the truth. It wasn't like they were ignorant of the existence of magic, and if he and Zeref lied now, they would probably figure out something was wrong sooner or later.

"You won't have heard of where I'm from," he settled for saying at last. "You could say that it's a world away from here."

He waited, watching the wheels turn behind their stares.

"You don't mean...?" Yuri started, eyes wide. "Is that even possible?"

"Well, I'm not surprised," the girl with the dark hair replied, shrugging her narrow shoulders. "We know magic's real. I don't see why there can't be other worlds out there too."

"But if you're from another world," a tall boy with short blond hair and a long, serious face spoke up, "how did you two meet?"

Natsu scrutinized the speaker, unsure what to think of him. He'd known him as the ruthless, power-hungry leader of a Dark Guild who had also once been a Fairy Tail guild master. The guy had, Natsu had learned later, learned magic from Zeref way back when Fairy Tail was just getting started, which was a little ironic since it would also be Zeref who would kill him years later. Seeing him now standing in an ordinary, sunlit living room next to the couch occupied by the two girls, Natsu felt very much like someone from another universe.

"You know that place you all said you sometimes dream about?" Natsu replied, choosing again to go with the truth—or a portion of it. "We met there when I was passing through. And before you ask, that was something like six or seven years ago."

.

Zeref was happy to let Natsu handle the explanations. His classmates seemed excited to discover that the place they dreamed of at times was, in fact, real. Some of them had even visited the same locations, although none of them had ever crossed paths there. Natsu omitted the fact that he was the red dragon some of them had glimpsed in the sky, focusing instead on the shark-like creatures that dwelled there and how he and Zeref had transported the one that had been responsible for the attacks back to its own dimension.

As the conversation continued and no uncomfortable questions were asked, Zeref found himself relaxing. He settled back into the armchair, folding his legs up onto the cushion, and listened as his friends tried to get Natsu to tell them more about the world he was from and what kind of magic he used—because of course he was a wizard.

Friends. Huh, they really were his friends, weren't they? Not very close ones, perhaps, but that was entirely his own fault for keeping them at a distance. If he really had been sick, they would probably have come over to check on him for real. They had brought him the school work he'd missed today by being absent, and they were trying to get to know Natsu, someone who was obviously important to him.

Had it been unfair of him to share so little about himself with them? Why had the thought of allowing them to get close made him feel so unsafe? Had he just been that uncertain about other people? He wouldn't even have given these classmates the chance—wouldn't have agreed to spend any time with them in the first place—if Natsu hadn't encouraged him to.

"So what do you think?"

It took Zeref a moment to realize that the room had gone silent and everyone was looking at him.

"I'm sorry. What did you say?"

Yuri was the one who answered him, making a vague gesture with one arm from where he sat on the carpet between the coffee table and the couch. "We were just talking about maybe doing something together for the New Year."

"For the New Year?" he repeated, confused. "But that's not for two months."

"Two months is nothing," Mavis said confidently. "It'll be here before you know it, so we have to be prepared. I think it would be fun if we could all do something together."

"I suppose it could be," Zeref conceded. He glanced at Natsu, who grinned.

"I'm sure I could make time for that."

"Like what though?" Zera asked, folding her arms across her chest. "There's no way I'm going to go fight the crowds downtown just to see fireworks."

"I'm sure we'll think of something," Warrod said. "There are always a lot of events going on at that time. Besides, we wouldn't have to go downtown to see fireworks."

The discussion continued, but Zeref lost track of it again. His head was starting to ache from pure exhaustion, but he found himself reluctant to ask that his classmates leave. He caught Natsu's gaze over their heads and managed a smile for him despite the throbbing at the back of his skull. There was so much he wanted to say to him right now, so much that he wanted him to know and to reassure him about. Perhaps the other wizard could find all this in his expression; Natsu had shown over the years that he was remarkably good at reading him. Zeref hoped so because so much of it was emotions he didn't have the words for.

So what if things were a bit confusing and complicated? They had time to figure it out.

.

"So it's settled then," Mavis concluded. "We'll go hiking this weekend, and we can bring lunch and get some magic practice in too if we can find somewhere out of the way. We'd love for you to join us if you have time, Natsu. And Zeref, you can't keep skipping out on club activities. Just because you've taught us the basics doesn't mean you can disappear."

When no response came, she glanced over at the armchair.

"He's asleep," Natsu told her. "Don't wake him. He needs it."

That was the cue for the members of the high school magic club to leave. They said their goodbyes to Natsu, and the Dragon Slayer locked the front door behind them. He could still hear their muffled voices as they moved away down the hall towards the stairs.

Natsu took one of the blankets from the stack Riana had left for him and draped it over the sleeping boy. Personally, he thought the temperature in the living room was rather pleasant, but he knew he wasn't a good judge of these things. He was perfectly comfortable in both freezing cold and sweltering hot weather, so it wasn't always easy to determine what the temperature felt like to other people.

Zeref mumbled something incoherent and curled up a bit more tightly on the armchair, pulling the blanket closer. Natsu hesitated then allowed himself to reach out and run his fingers through his hair, brushing it back and letting his palm linger for a moment against Zeref's cheek before turning and walking out of the living room.

It was difficult at times to decide what was selfish and what wasn't, as well as when selfishness was okay.

The clicking of computer keys paused when he knocked on the door of what he understood to be Tomi's office and Natsu opened it, poking his head into the room beyond.

"Hey, you got a minute?"

Tomi sat back and his chair squeaked with the motion.

"Of course. Have they gone?"

"Yeah."

"And my son?"

"Asleep in the living room. I think he'll be out for awhile. Don't worry," Natsu added at the concern that flickered across the writer's face. "He's just tired. Magic can drain a lot of energy and he didn't really eat."

Tomi nodded and picked up the mug that sat next to his keyboard, taking a sip of the now lukewarm coffee.

"So what did you want to talk to me about?"

Natsu stepped into the office but left the door open so he would hear if Zeref stirred.

"I wanted to ask about work, actually. What kind of jobs can people get around here?"

"I assume this is about money."

"Basically. I don't want to feel like I'm mooching off your family, especially since I'm going to be around a lot."

"I understand, but it might be hard for you to get a job around here if you're going to be traveling back and forth a great deal between worlds." Tomi rested his elbows on his desk, thinking. "I noticed that my son has a lot of things I don't think I've ever seen him buy. Would I be right that they're from you?"

"Depends on what you're talking about."

"The quill pen? The box with the magnolia pattern?"

"Yeah, those are from me."

"You could probably sell things like quill pens. It would have to be ordinary things, of course, things that could believably have come from this world instead of yours. People here often really like handcrafted goods—jewelry, for example."

Natsu looked thoughtful.

"So I could buy the stuff at home and bring them here. That way, we get around the currency problem, and as long as we keep the number of items to a minimum... It's not like I'm looking to make a huge profit."

Tomi nodded, but added, "Of course, this is all assuming it won't cause problems. It doesn't seem like the gifts you've given my son have brought over any monsters with them."

The wizard snorted.

"Of course not. Like you said, they've all been perfectly ordinary things. It's too bad I probably can't work part time as a firefighter."

Tomi raised his eyebrows.

"Why a firefighter?"

"Because I'm fireproof. I'd say that's a valuable quality for a person who rescues people from fires. I'm good at putting fires out too, as long as I'm not the one who started them."

Natsu half expected the man to express incredulity since even other wizards found Dragon Slayer abilities strange, but instead, Tomi's expression became thoughtful.

"As long as you're careful and don't make what you do seem too extraordinary, perhaps we could work something out with the fire department. I have a friend from college who works there now. You'll have to go through their required training, of course, and get certified, but I doubt that will be much of a problem for you."

And it could save lives, which Tomi thought could only be a good thing.

"I'll talk to him and see if we can set up a meeting to discuss it—if you're interested."

"Sure, okay. That would be cool, thanks."

"No problem. Although just so you know, it's really not necessary. I think you've done more for this family than you know." Tomi smiled, finished the last of his drink, and stood up with the mug in his hands. "Excuse me. I'm going to make some more coffee."

.

And so at last, life began to settle down again.

The coma patients in the hospital woke up after a few more days of rest, no worse for the experience, and no further incidents were reported. Zeref, too, was good as new after getting what felt like two days' worth of sleep and went back to school. As far as the teachers and other students knew, he'd simply been out sick, and nobody asked him any questions. Natsu spent more time with him than in Fiore, and began to join the magic club during their out-of-school activities.

After Zeref noted somewhat unhappily that they spent hardly any time in the dream world anymore, they also began to set days aside every other weekend where Natsu took them across dimensions so they could continue their explorations of the mysterious world where they had first met. These expeditions served the dual purpose of giving them some quiet time alone together and letting them test the waters for the future, making sure that Zeref suffered no ill effects from physically traversing worlds alongside the dragon. Sometimes, they would detour to the national park before they set out or after they returned, and they'd share the food they had packed while they watched the sunset.

All in all then, Natsu was pleased by how things were progressing.

Back in Fiore, on the other hand, things were just about to change.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

16.

"So they'll be visiting?" Lucy held the teacup in her hands, watching Erza move about the kitchen, throwing together something for them to eat. "Did he say when?"

"No, unfortunately. But then we didn't have much time to talk." Erza set a plate of pastries and a plate of sandwiches on the table then sat down across from her guest. "He was only at the guild for a moment looking at job requests."

"Natsu's lucky he owns that house of his. If he had a landlady like mine, he would have gotten evicted ages ago."

The older woman laughed, but the amusement died quickly. The reason for their friend's frequent absences over the last few years was, after all, extremely serious.

Natsu hadn't been the same after the war. None of them had been, if Lucy was honest with herself. Juvia no longer got carried away with her infatuation, Elfman got more quiet, Gray seemed more tired, Evergreen had lost a great deal of her original haughtiness, Wendy had grown more self assured and more sad... There were far fewer brawls around the guild house these days, and not just because members like Natsu spent less time there.

"Is Jellal gone on Council business?" she asked, breaking the grim silence that had settled between them.

"Yes. He should be back in about a week if all goes smoothly."

"It still feels strange that he's back on the Magic Council."

"Things have changed."

"That they have."

The changes weren't all bad. Jellal had officially been pardoned, and he and Erza had gotten married not so long ago. Their townhouse near the guild was a brightly furnished and cozy place, which was why Lucy and their other friends visited so often. It was now mandatory for wizards to spend time at guilds other than their own, going on a few joint missions a year—both to create friendly connections and to keep an eye on one another. Gajeel and Levy had had a daughter, and watching the gruff Dragon Slayer dote on the child was incredibly endearing for all of them.

Sometimes though, Lucy missed the past when they were all so much more carefree. She supposed it was probably very similar to the nostalgia many adults felt when looking back on their childhoods. It wasn't that being grown up was bad, just that things had been easier as children.

"Honestly, I'm kind of nervous," she admitted suddenly, catching Erza's eye over the table.

The redhead paused, having just taken a bite from a strawberry croissant. She swallowed, set the pastry back down on her plate, and took a moment to study Lucy's face.

"You don't have to feel bad about being nervous, you know," she said.

"It's not that," the Celestial Wizard replied. "It's just that I'm afraid it's going to be awkward. I want him to feel welcome, but I don't know how to do that. And this is really important to Natsu."

Erza nodded. She understood what the other wizard was driving at. Zeref had been... difficult to get to know, although he had also proved an invaluable and reliable ally. He had been used to being alone and to keeping people at a distance, and it had showed. The psychological distance was compounded by the physical distance necessitated by his curse, and it was hard to imagine how different he might be without that barrier. The most they had been able to get out of Natsu was that Zeref was different but also the same, which was really no answer at all. Anyway, Natsu's opinions were inaccurate because his immunity to aforementioned curse meant that his interactions with the Black Wizard had been marked by a distinct lack of the extreme stress that plagued everyone else.

Erza leaned back in her chair and looked towards the kitchen window, which she had left open to let in the warm, spring breeze. Or was that summer now? She could definitely smell summer in the air already, even though it was a bit early in the year. From where she sat, she could see the roof of the guild house, the shingles bathed in sunlight. More than a year had passed since they last had to renovate anything, which was a definite blessing.

It was good weather for traveling in, she thought. Good weather for introductions and new beginnings too.

"I think," she said finally, offering her longtime friend a reassuring smile, "that we just have to be ourselves. It could be awkward, but who knows? Maybe it won't be. And anyway, what's meeting a stranger to fighting off Dark Guilds and monsters?"

Besides, positive relationships had to start with honesty.

.

Zeref attached his essay to the e-mail, glanced over the message he had written to his teacher one last time, then clicked the "send" button and sat back in his chair. That was the last of his class assignments for now, which meant that summer vacation had officially started.

The window of his bedroom was open, and the summer air was pleasant despite the telltale hint of concrete and car exhaust. There wasn't much of a view with just the street below and the other apartment buildings nearby, but that hardly seemed important right now. He shut his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply. He couldn't remember ever being this excited for the start of summer vacation—relieved, yes, but not excited.

His mother was at work and his father had a meeting with the editor of a local magazine. Natsu should be arriving soon to pick him up, but for the moment, he was alone in the apartment. Classes had let out yesterday, and it would be at least two months before they started up again.

Two months.

He was going to be away from home for two months in a place with no computers or cell phones meeting people that Natsu considered family. Maybe it was anxiety and not excitement that was making him feel jittery and restless.

Zeref turned off his laptop and stood up, heading into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. Or perhaps he should have some tea instead. His mother was fond of herbal teas meant for calming one's nerves and easing stress. That sounded lik a good idea, so he dug one of the teabags out of the cupboard and set a kettle of water on the stove. He was still standing before the stove and willing the water to boil more quickly when he heard the scrape of a key in the lock from the direction of the front door.

That would be Natsu, he thought. His father had given the wizard a spare key a few months ago.

Sure enough, after he heard the front door open and close, Natsu walked into the kitchen. He padded silently across the tiles and slid his arms around Zeref from behind.

"You okay? You know staring at it's not going to make it boil any faster."

"I know." Zeref sighed and leaned back into his embrace. He had discovered over the last few months that he did, indeed, very much like being held. There was a certain sense of security about it. "I think I might be nervous."

"You really shouldn't be. It's basically just a vacation. Meeting a few new people is only to be expected."

Somehow, it didn't surprise the boy that Natsu knew exactly what was stressing him out. He hoped that someday, he'd be able to read Natsu just as well. This thought settled his nerves a bit. That was a major reason he wanted so badly to go on this trip. Meeting people he didn't know was just a part of that, and anyway, they were probably going to be just as nervous as he was.

Zeref couldn't count the number of times he had reread that letter they had asked Natsu to bring to him, trying to imagine the people who had written it.

"I dropped by your school to pick up those exams like you asked," Natsu added. "They're on the living room table. Also, I ran into your friends while I was there, and they all want to be there to see us off. I had to tell them we were leaving today or else they were planning on coming over."

"I suppose it can't be helped." Zeref sighed. "We will be gone for most of the summer. I still wish they'd just say good bye here at the house instead of seeing us off though."

"Why's that?"

"Because... well, because they're going to find out you can turn into a dragon."

Natsu raised his eyebrows at the mumbled response, but the kettle began to whistle before he could ask about it.

Zeref turned off the stove and reached out to grab a mug from the draining board. He set it on the counter, dropped a teabag into it, then carefully poured boiling water over the packet of dried herbs. The water immediately began to turn brown and the smell of chamomile and lemongrass drifted up to join the lingering fragrance of his father's morning cup of coffee.

Natsu let go of him and moved to the fridge.

"You want anything? There's still some time before we're due to meet your parents for lunch."

"No, I'm okay." Zeref brought his mug over to the kitchen table and sat down. "If I eat something now, I won't be able to eat lunch."

"I never could understand that problem," Natsu said, removing a bowl of leftover fried rice from the refrigerator and then turning to the microwave. "I can always eat more."

Zeref could certainly vouch for that. Whenever the other wizard stayed over, leftovers vanished from the fridge like magic. Riana had begun cooking more because of it, the Dragon Slayer's phenomenal appetite giving her new confidence in her culinary skills. Personally, Zeref had his doubts about the two being related, but he refrained from explaining this to his mother. She wasn't a bad cook after all, just an absentminded one on occasion. He did, however, make a point of helping her out in the kitchens when he could, just to make sure she didn't burn anything because of a phone call again. Anyway, cooking was a useful skill to have.

"Have you packed?" Natsu asked, joining him at the table when the rice was done heating.

"I've picked out a few changes of clothes, but I was wondering if you could look them over and make sure they won't stand out too much over there before I pack them."

"Sure, and if you need anything else, we can always buy it when we get there."

That's right. It wasn't like they were going somewhere totally unfamiliar to both of them. They were visiting a place that Natsu had called home for years.

Everything would be fine and he should just let himself be excited.

.

They had lunch with Tomi and Riana at a local noodle shop, and then all four of them drove out to the national park. The other members of the magic club were already there waiting for them, and once they arrived, the whole group started off on one of the park's longest trails. The path meandered through the woods then up the side of the mountain, crossing a number of streams before passing through a vast meadow dotted with wildflowers.

"This place should work," Natsu said, stepping off the packed dirt trail and striking out across the grass. "There's plenty of room and the visitor center's far enough away."

Zeref trailed after him, but Tomi stopped the other magic club members before they could follow.

"It would be better if we stay back here," the writer told them, his voice just a tad apologetic. "We don't want to get in the way."

Zeref tried to ignore the confused questions and speculations going on behind them. He was more than ready to be on their way, and anyway, he disliked the feeling of being watched by so many pairs of eyes.

Natsu stopped in the middle of the field and glanced back at him. Zeref thought he glimpsed an amused gleam in the other's eyes for a moment before he had to raise an arm to shield his face from the blinding maelstrom of energy like gold and crimson fire. As soon as the light faded, he hurried forward and scrambled up the dragon's side with the ease of much repeated practice.

The moment he was settled, the dragon launched himself skyward amidst a storm of wind and dust stirred up by the action. Zeref shut his eyes and ducked his head to protect his face, and it wasn't until they were way above the trees that he opened them again and looked down. He would never tire of this, he thought, unable to stop a smile from breaking across his face. No wonder people had invented airplanes. Flying was an incredible pleasure.

Far below them on the ground, they could hear Yuri exclaiming in shock accompanied by the others' excited voices. Then Natsu veered sharply towards the east and the world around them shifted in a swirl of mist. The sounds of their audience faded away to be replaced by the eerie stillness of the in-between place, and when the fog cleared, they were gliding high over a familiar, silver desert dotted with jagged slabs of obsidian stone.

"Why didn't you want them to know I was the dragon?" Natsu asked, turning to head towards a particular cluster of stars near the gray-blue horizon.

Zeref flattened himself against the dragon's warm scales and mumbled, "It's going to sound very selfish of me."

"Yeah?"

"I... don't want you to carry anyone else, so I didn't want to give anyone the chance to ask. Just me. Going flying together... those memories are ours, and I don't want to share them. Not if I don't have to. Emergencies like with my mother are another matter, of course."

He could feel as well as hear the dragon's rumbling laugh.

"You don't have to worry about that. I don't plan to."

In certain respects, they were really rather alike.

.

"I can't believe they didn't tell us!" Yuri groused, shading his eyes with one hand as he tried to watch the dragon climbing ever higher into the sky above them. "And with how many times we mentioned seeing dragons."

"I thought it seemed obvious," Mavis mused, more to herself than to her friends. "I mean, I thought it was obvious they knew the dragon with the looks they gave each other whenever we talked about it. I didn't think Natsu actually _was_ the dragon though."

"I would have liked to know," Zera said, frowning. "I hate it when people intentionally keep so many secrets. There shouldn't be secrets between friends."

The shorter girl took her hand and smiled up at her. "Well, it's not a secret anymore, right? I'm sure they'll trust us eventually."

Behind them, Tomi coughed to gain their attention. When he was sure that he had it, he asked, "Riana and I are thinking about returning to that restaurant we passed for some afternoon tea and cake. Would you like to join us?"

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	17. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

17.

Since Natsu had found him on the plateau, they had referred to this place as a dream world. It was Zeref's dream world, the world in which his mind traveled when his body was at rest. But it was more real than that, especially now that he was physically here.

Natsu himself thought of Zeref's dream world as an in-between place. It was a world that connected all other worlds together, the back ways and hidden gates that bridged dream and reality. In these seemingly endless stretches of silver sand and obsidian stone, crystalline pools and pools like dense, black water—if one knew how to read it—was a map. A map that both guided their way now and held the pieces that composed it together.

"The whole flight's about an hour," Natsu said. "But there's this lake where I like to stop on the way to rest my wings. And let me know if you want to stretch your legs, or if you get cold. I know the temperature's supposed to be low this high up, but I'm not good at telling when it's uncomfortable for other people."

"I'm quite warm," Zeref assured him, adjusting the hood of his coat so that the folds of cloth settled about his neck like a scarf. He'd found the dove gray overcoat in his closet at home although he had no recollection of where he had gotten it, and though it was somewhat too large for him, it was lined for winter and quite good at keeping off the chill. Besides, he was riding on a Fire Dragon. "How do you know which way to go? Are there a lot of landmarks on the way that don't move around?"

"There are a few, and then there's the stars. You know how we noticed that the stars never change."

"Oh, that's right. I'd almost forgotten."

.

Natsu remembered the first time he had found his way into this strangely silent world quite well. It wasn't exactly what he would call a "good" memory, although he thought of it that way now because it was this place that had eventually brought Zeref back to him.

It had happened on his way back home after another failed attempt to find anything in Edolas. He'd been incredibly frustrated and perhaps just a little depressed too, and so he hadn't been as focused as he should have been on actually reaching Earth Land when he made the jump across dimensions. The result? Rather than appearing in the skies over Fiore, the mist had cleared to reveal a cloudless evening sky sprinkled with unfamiliar stars over a desert with sand like grains of silver. The strangeness and stillness of it had startled him out of his bad mood and he'd spent hours just flying aimlessly, stopping whenever his wings grew tired to rest. Something about the quiet and the lack of other life calmed the chaos of his worries and hopes and fears, and all that empty sky soothed his restlessness. He could fly as far as he wanted and land wherever he pleased without having to listen to people scream in terror. That reaction had amused him at first, but it got tiring fast—especially when it interfered with his search. When that happened, he got angry, and that wasn't healthy for anyone.

Perhaps he had been a bit too quick to anger. He knew his friends thought so, but he didn't have the patience then to care.

After that, he had made several more trips back and forth between the two parallel universes, trying to find a way back to this mysterious place that seemed devoid of life and yet so tranquil. Eventually, he'd noticed the unique scent that lingered in the air at times when he made the jump, and that trail had at last led him here. Although he couldn't explain why, he had felt even then that this world would be the key to his search, and he always trusted his gut feelings.

"Have you seen a lot of worlds?" Zeref asked, his voice nearly silenced by the wind that streamed past them.

"Quite a few, I suppose, although I spent the most time in Edolas. Mostly because it was the first alternative world I learned of. Strange place. Doesn't have any magic in it anymore."

"Edolas? I think you've mentioned the name before."

"Yeah, probably. It's a parallel world to Earth Land, and there are parallel-world versions of a lot of people that I know there."

"Including you?"

The dragon let out a derisive snort. "Yeah, but we're nothing alike. He likes to drive racing vehicles and is a huge coward in everything else, annoying wimp."

Zeref tried to imagine this, but couldn't. It just sounded creepy and unpleasant.

"Come to think of it," the dragon continued, "almost everyone's counterpart was their opposite in some way. We might look similar, but it's obvious that we're all very different people."

Zeref considered this for a moment then said, "I suppose that's really to be expected. Who we are is determined by our experiences and our souls, not our appearances."

"That may be true," Natsu agreed, "but it still mystifies me how someone who looks like my twin could be so spineless."

The wind muted the sound of Zeref's laughter, but Natsu heard him regardless and smiled to himself. It was a more tender expression than had crossed the dragon's face in a long time, although it would probably not have looked so to an outsider. Dragons were, after all, not known for being kind or gentle.

.

The lake Natsu had spoken of really _was_ spectacular. It sprawled over several kilometers and, like all of the lakes they had found in this place, its surface was as smooth and transparent as glass. What set this lake apart from the others were the crystals like coral reefs upon the lake's bottom.

"This was one of the first things I saw when I got to this place," Natsu explained, settling himself on the sandy shore and folding his wings. "I use it a lot for navigation because It's large and easy to spot, not to mention it's like those landmarks we found and doesn't shift locations."

"It's incredible," Zeref said, kneeling by the water's edge and hesitantly reaching into the shallows to touch a fragment of crystal like a glass flower half submerged in the sand. At his touch, the crystal flared with green light and he yanked his hand back with a gasp.

"It's just light," Natsu assured him. "All the crystals do that. I've no idea why."

Zeref sat back on his heels. "Maybe it reacts to magic. Or maybe foreign life or living beings in general. It's too bad I can't take a bit with us."

Before that shark monster incident back home, he wouldn't have thought anything of pocketing some of the crystal for later contemplation. He knew better now though. Sometimes, it was best to leave things where they were.

"I'll bring you back any time you like," the dragon promised, "so it's not necessary. By the way, when we get there, you should try not to ask too many questions where other people can hear."

"So I don't draw too much attention to myself," Zeref finished for him, moving to sit in the crook of the dragon's left foreleg. "I understand. Is there anything else you think I should keep in mind?"

Long years of practice deciphering the dragon's subtle facial expressions told Zeref that he was frowning.

"I'm not sure. I've never paid much attention to rules or customs. I will say that violence is a lot more common and you'll probably see way more fighting than you're used to. It's just a part of everyday life, and people don't pay too much attention to it. Magic is commonplace, more or less, and it's not unusual for someone to be a wizard. There are still a few rogue dark wizards about after the war and they can be a bit troublesome, but for this trip, I doubt they'll be our problem."

They'd better not be, Natsu thought, or he'd kill them.

"So you already have some jobs in mind?" Zeref asked.

"I dropped by the guild and picked up a few I thought might be fun. You can take a look at them when we get there and see which one you're more interested in."

"What kind of jobs are they?"

"There's a treasure hunting type one and one where we'd be helping out a cartographer who, for some crazy reason, seems to have decided that she wants to make a map of this region that has a lot of old ruins and traps. They seemed like great ways to start getting to know Fiore."

"They both sound like they'd be interesting," Zeref said. He was already very much looking forward to this vacation, even if it was technically work.

"We could do both if you want. Neither are that time sensitive. By the end of the summer should be fine." The dragon yawned then added, "Shall we get going?"

"All right."

Zeref stood up, stretched, then clambered up the dragon's side. Natsu waited for him to settle himself before rising to his feet and shaking out his wings. As he prepared to take off, however, another thought occurred to him and he paused.

"Just one more thing. Try not to get into any fights. I might... overreact. Because it's you."

"Don't worry, I will," Zeref assured him. "I did promise you that safety would be my first priority."

"And I promised your parents I'd bring you home in one piece," Natsu said wryly. "They'll probably never let me whisk you off again if I don't keep it."

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	18. Chapter 18

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

18.

When the crimson dragon appeared in the skies over Magnolia, hardly anyone reacted. Said dragon had become a familiar sight here over the past few years, and since it never did anything threatening and tended to disappear again almost right away, there wasn't much point in getting scared or excited.

Nobody noticed that this time, the dragon was carrying someone—a boy, in fact, with slightly messy, black hair and large, dark eyes that peered towards the ground with open fascination. He was wearing a backpack as well as a dove gray coat that was slightly too large for him.

Natsu flew a lazy circle over the city so Zeref could get a good look at it before gliding down to land in a forest clearing some distance away.

"If you don't mind, I think we'll steer clear of the guild house for now—unless you really want a look at it. I don't want everyone to know we're here just yet."

"I don't mind," Zeref assured him, climbing carefully down to the ground. "I'd rather get settled first anyway, and you know I don't really like crowds."

.

Of course, just because most people didn't react to the appearance of the dragon didn't mean that nobody had seen it. Several people had noted its arrival out of habit, and most of them had spent the morning at the Fairy Tail guild house.

"Do you think we should drop by?" Lucy wondered aloud. She was standing in front of the job boards, but her attention kept straying from the many pieces of paper tacked up upon them.

"Hmmm." Erza pursed her lips. "Well, I don't see any harm in it. Besides, there's a job request I was interested in that I think Mirajane said Natsu took yesterday."

"He did? What kind of job was it?"

The redhead tucked her bright red hair behind her ear and gave her a wry smile. "A treasure hunting job."

"Oh. We haven't had many of those lately. Sounds like fun."

Not to mention a pleasant change from the profusion of rebuilding and repair jobs that still flooded the request boards. What had taken mere months to destroy was taking years upon years to fix.

"That's what I thought."

"Should we bring anyone else?"

"I would have said our old team, but Gray's still on that assignment with Lamia Scale and both Happy and Carla are still working to help those Exceeds transition into their new guilds. Wendy's far too busy with her hospital, especially with that flu that went around. So that leaves just us for now."

Just them, huh? Perhaps that was for the best.

"Maybe we should bring some pastries or something. I don't want to just show up empty-handed with how long it's been."

"Good idea. I know just the place. There's this bakery that just opened up where you can buy the best creampuffs."

.

It wasn't a large house, which was to be expected, with a modest living room and kitchen on the ground floor and a flight of stairs leading up to two rooms on the second. It wasn't like a great many people lived there. In fact, Zeref thought, it didn't really look like Natsu had been living there either.

There wasn't dust on the furniture or an excessive pile-up of unread mail—nothing obvious like that. But there was... a certain extreme tidiness that he didn't associate with Natsu and a distinct lack of food in the kitchens. The air, too, had a certain unused quality about it that reminded him of rooms in which no one had been for a long time, not stale precisely but not fresh either.

Natsu had not yet returned from buying something for them to eat; Zeref had considered going with him, but then changed his mind in favor of exploring the house, which the other wizard had said he was free to do. There wasn't a whole lot to see on the ground floor, so after opening the windows to let a breeze in, Zeref headed up the stairs. The bedroom stood open, and he crossed the room to open that window as well. Here, too, everything was extremely tidy—so much so that he doubted anyone had used it in quite some time. The bed was neatly made and the clock on the nightstand appeared to have stopped working, its hands stilled at half past seven.

Zeref had never seriously thought before about just how much time Natsu spent with him. The realization made his heart ache a little, but he found it hard to articulate exactly why that was. Part of it was guilt for occupying so much of Natsu's time. He hoped the wizard knew how grateful he was and how much that time meant to him. Another part of it was the loneliness of this empty house and imagining the grief and frustration that had fueled the dragon's search for him. This Zeref had thought about extensively, especially in the last half a year, but being here made it all more real somehow.

There were no pictures or other hangings on the walls, although Zeref did find what looked like an astronomical chart tacked up in the hallway. He stood examining the display of foreign stars for awhile, fascinated by the diagrams of star movements and placements throughout the year, as well as their affects on certain magical theories. This didn't seem like the kind of thing Natsu would be all that interested in, which meant... it was very likely left over from his own past self.

What a strange, surreal thought that was.

Zeref wasn't sure how he felt or should feel about this, and so he pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind for later.

He wasn't that person anymore, but at the same time, that history had had real repercussions in his current life as well as influences upon the person he had become. The very concept of a soul essentially meant that there was some part of a person that went beyond the collection of personal experiences and the influences of context and biology. From Natsu's behavior and stories, for instance, Zeref had inferred that there were certain things about him—the basics of his personality, for example, and the way he thought about things and approached problems—that remained very similar, if not exactly the same. So what did that mean? What did it mean—if it meant anything at all—to be someone's reincarnation? Did it matter? Was it even important that he had once been someone else? He didn't think so, but it occurred to him that other people might not agree. Then again, what did he care what strangers thought? He had never been insecure about his own identity, and he certainly wasn't going to start now.

Perhaps it was similar to a person with amnesia who happened to be in a position where he could start a new life.

So then... did it matter to Natsu? That question was more complicated. The dragon had searched for him because of who he had been, but at the same time, he had never made Zeref feel as though he had to be anyone other than exactly who he was now.

Zeref shook his head and opened the second door on the landing. Light spilled into the room from the hallway and filtered through the shutters of the window, revealing what appeared to be a small study with a desk and two bookshelves lined with books. Another set of shelves housing several dozen scrolls stood beside what Zeref at first thought to be a couch but, upon closer inspection, proved to be a cot that had not been furnished with blankets or pillows.

The books and scrolls were mostly about magic. There was information on magical theory and origins as well as different types of magic and how they evolved over the course of human history. In addition to that, there were books on folklore and mythology, as well as a number of novels and short story collections—most of which seemed to be about dragons. Zeref was perusing one of these when the doorbell rang.

Zeref paused with the book still open and thought quickly. It couldn't be Natsu because the Dragon Slayer had a key, but if it wasn't Natsu, then who was it? More importantly, since it wasn't Natsu, should he open the door? The windows were open, so it was obvious someone was—or at least had recently been—in the house. What if it was a burglar checking to see if the house's occupants had merely forgotten to shut the windows before going out? That was the main reason his parents always told him to answer the door when he was at home even if they weren't expecting visitors.

Decision made, he carefully replaced the book on its shelf and started down the stairs.

He hesitated again with his hand on the door handle. Did this count as not being careful? He turned this question over for a second then discarded it. With current circumstances, that was just paranoia talking.

He unlocked and opened the door to find two young women on the doorstep. The taller one had vivid scarlet hair that fell in a loose waterfall down to her waist while the other was blond and had her hair tied back. Both of them stared at him.

"Can I help you?" he asked when the silence got uncomfortable.

The two young women looked at each other, then the blond one held up the white cardboard box in her arms and said, "Um, hi. My name's Lucy. Is Natsu home? We brought creampuffs."

.

The two guild wizards hadn't been sure what to expect, but when the door opened, there had been a split second where they both felt as though they had seen a ghost. The boy who stood there looking at them with polite non-recognition was almost the exact likeness of the Black Wizard they had last seen years ago. He had the same pale complexion and black hair, mostly smooth except for a bit of unruliness in the back. He had the same eyes too, large and dark and strangely old for such a young face. It was those eyes that were the most startling, and their curious and puzzled gaze made them momentarily uncertain of how to proceed.

Still, they were—if anything—accustomed to surprises, and so after Lucy had introduced herself and the creampuffs, Erza gave her name as well and assured the boy that Natsu wouldn't mind if they came in. She was not actually sure of this, but she had the feeling that Natsu would forgive the transgression as long as Zeref was okay with it. Anyway, she had the feeling also that it would be easier to begin the process of getting to know him without the Dragon Slayer in the background watching them all like a hawk. Or perhaps "like a dragon" was the more appropriate comparison here.

"Sorry, but I don't know where anything is yet," Zeref told them. "I suppose there should be plates in the kitchen cupboards."

"No need," Erza told him. "The shop gave us napkins. That should do for creampuffs. Where is Natsu, anyway?"

She was surprised that the Dragon Slayer had left him by himself. Actually, that was probably a good sign.

"He went to get us something to eat," the boy explained, hovering by the dining table as though unsure if he should sit or not.

He was nervous, Erza realized, and the realization felt strange too. The Zeref they had known had always been incredibly difficult to read.

Taking charge of the situation, Erza took the box from Lucy and set it on the table. She opened it and placed the stack of napkins tucked in one corner out on the tabletop before taking one napkin for herself and using it to select a creampuff.

"This pastry shop made its reputation with creampuffs," she said, humor making her voice warm. "We weren't sure what flavors you'd prefer, so we got a few of each. I like the blueberry ones myself, but the chocolate ones are also amazing."

Lucy followed her friend's example, taking a seat at the table and choosing a vanilla creampuff for herself.

Zeref hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he, too, chose a chair and a creampuff: chocolate.

"We saw you two arrive," Lucy said, breaking the silence that threatened to sneak back into the room. "How was the trip?"

"Not as long as I thought it would be. But I like flying, so perhaps it only felt short," he replied. He nibbled on the creampuff, blinked as though startled, and then took a proper bite of it. "It's very good."

"Told you so." Erza finished her own creampuff and picked another. "He did mention something about flying being necessary to the way he jumps worlds. I think he said something about finding an in-between world that makes it easier too."

Zeref nodded. "I like it there. It's very quiet. Or it is most of the time."

"Is it?" Lucy was interested. Natsu never told them anything about it, and he'd been so difficult to approach since the war. If Zeref was willing to talk, then all the better. "You sound like you've been there before this?"

He seemed surprised by the question and hesitated again before answering. "I met Natsu there. I was... dreaming. For a long time, I thought I was only dreaming of dragons."

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	19. Chapter 19

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

19.

Natsu's impulsive reaction upon approaching the house and realizing that they had visitors was irritation. He stamped down on the utterly irrational response and paused on the doorstep to compose himself. Meeting his friends was kind of the point of all this, he reminded himself, or at least one of the important reasons. Nobody was going to take Zeref away from him, and he didn't have to protect him from his friends. There was no logical reason for him to feel restless or on edge.

When Natsu was certain his discontent wouldn't show, he unlocked the front door and went in, calling a cheerful greeting to their guests.

"You're back," Lucy said brightly—and somewhat unnecessarily. "There are still plenty of creampuffs."

"I like the chocolate ones," Zeref volunteered, and Natsu was glad that he sounded relaxed. "But the other ones are good too."

"Yeah?" Natsu set the bags he'd brought back on the table and glanced into the open box at the remaining collection of round, multicolored creampuffs. "Guess I should try some later."

Erza cleared her throat and said, "Natsu, I'm told you took that job that recently came in—the one about finding a jade mirror. Lucy and I were wondering if we could join you."

"Sure, but I actually picked up two job requests and we haven't settled on which one we'll be doing first yet. I wanted Zeref to have a chance to look them over."

"Can I see them now?" the wizard in question asked.

"One second."

Natsu went upstairs then returned a moment later with two pieces of paper, which he handed to Zeref before starting to set out the food he had bought. A number of shops had closed down in his absence, and he'd been away so much that he hardly recognized any of the new shops that had replaced them. Since he didn't know which new restaurants were good, he'd bought a bit of this and a bit of that from any place he passed that smelled acceptable. The result was a diverse array of stir-fry, meat and vegetable wraps, dumplings, fried fish, and even a collection of mini sandwiches.

Zeref stared wide-eyed at the many, many plates and boxes, the papers held loosely in his hands. "I really hope most of that is for you."

Natsu chuckled. "I figured it would be. Traveling long distance makes me hungry. Just eat what you can, and I'll finish the rest."

.

Zeref was not accustomed to being glue. The social skills required to build connections and friendships were skills that he had had to work very hard to acquire even a little, and even that wouldn't have happened if Natsu hadn't pushed him to try all those years ago when Mavis had approached him to ask about magic lessons for her and her friends. So it was somewhat disconcerting now and perhaps just a tad ironic as well that he found himself the one encouraging conversation around the dining table. When a beat of silence went on for a bit too long or one of the guild wizards hesitated a fraction before choosing not to say what had obviously been on the tip of her tongue, he offered his own comments, musings, and questions about life in Magnolia as wizards, guild work, and life in Fiore overall.

Despite the unexpectedness of it, Zeref was glad to do this. It was, after all, partly his fault that Natsu had neglected his own friendships these past few years. A much greater part, however, had simply been the Dragon Slayer's volatile way of dealing with grief in the aftermath of the war. But that was neither here nor now, nor was it anyone's responsibility—just a fact that had led to the reality that they now had to deal with.

Still, as willing as he was to help smooth relations that had become strained by distance and uncertainty, Zeref was quite exhausted by the time the two women left with plans to meet up with them the next morning so they could leave together for the job. He locked the door after them and stood for a moment, looking at the patterns in the grain of the wood. On the bright side, he was no longer anxious about whether he would get along with these people. When both sides were willing, making connections wasn't really that difficult, and it helped that he didn't feel as though he needed to hide anything from them since they already knew so much.

He felt more than heard Natsu approach. He turned and was unsurprised when Natsu pressed him back against the closed door and leaned down to catch his lips. Zeref had grown much more comfortable with the physical side of their relationship over the last year and leaned easily into the kiss, wrapping his arms around the taller wizard's neck. After a moment, he felt the subtle tension in Natsu's shoulders ease.

"I thought you _wanted_ me to meet your friends," Zeref said quietly when the other pulled away, searching Natsu's face for some hint as to whether he had been wrong about this.

"I do and I don't." The Dragon Slayer exhaled slowly. "And to be precise, I'm sure I said that _they_ were the ones who wanted to meet you, not that I wanted them to. I don't— _not_ —want them to, but... It's complicated."

"I know." Zeref gave him a small smile. "You used to say so a lot."

"I did?"

"Often enough. And even if you hadn't, I would have been able to imagine. To be honest, I thought about it a lot whenever you wouldn't tell me about something."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. I understand why, and I think you made the right decision."

"I suppose I'm glad I didn't just ignore everyone's advice about it then. I was never sure what the best decision was."

The Dragon Slayer's gaze grew distant. He straightened so that he was no longer boxing the shorter boy in against the door, and one hand drifted down from its former position against said door to Zeref's hip. Calloused fingers slipped under the hem of his shirt to trace a circular pattern on bare skin. Zeref caught his breath but struggled not to react so as not to draw Natsu's attention to it. The gesture was familiar and absentminded like a lot of little things he did when he was human—things he tended to hesitate to do when he was paying attention to his own actions, which was a pity since Zeref had developed a great fondness for the casual intimacy of these touches.

" _I'm not made of glass_ ," Zeref had told him after that startling scene in his bedroom months ago. " _So please, just be yourself, all right? If you want to—to kiss me or—or whatever, just do it, and I will tell you if and when I'm uncomfortable_."

Natsu had given him a very peculiar look, somewhere between amusement and incredulity like he didn't quite believe Zeref knew what he was talking about—which, Zeref had to admit, he probably didn't. Still, he _did_ know that there had been a degree of ease in being close to one another when he'd only known Natsu as a dragon that he wanted back. It was completely ridiculous to be more comfortable with proximity to a giant, fire-breathing, carnivorous magical beast than to a human being. Sure, the direction their relationship had taken meant things were a bit different—something Natsu had not-so-gently reminded him of with that not-so-gentle kiss—but that was precisely the point.

Natsu had thought over his arguments and agreed that he would try. However, it was still a work in progress since neither of them were sure where the boundaries were and they were trying to feel them out from very different starting points. But again, that was Zeref's point too. They had to figure things out so that they didn't end up putting up boundaries where none had to be.

" _I don't want to be selfish_ ," Natsu had confided one afternoon when he'd accompanied Zeref to the library after school. The library had a handful of sofas among their furniture, and Zeref had appropriated one of these so that Natsu could hold him while he perused books and made notes for his history report. " _But I'm afraid I will be—am—with you_."

To which Zeref had replied, " _It's okay to be selfish sometimes_." And he'd meant it too. " _As long as you don't stop listening. You want me to be happy, and I want you to be happy. Making someone happy sometimes means being a little selfish_."

The willingness to compromise was important, for example, but that wasn't all there was. All things in moderation.

"You're not the only one who misses our old plateau now and then," Natsu said finally, his gaze refocusing on the present. His expression was rueful but no longer troubled.

That was good.

Zeref's smile widened, and all the excitement he'd felt about this vacation came flooding back. He couldn't wait to get on the road.

"I'm glad to see you're not nervous anymore," Natsu observed, genuinely amused now. "Did you three talk a lot while I was out?"

"Quite a lot, yes. I told them how we met. I hope that's okay."

"Yeah. Suppose I should have done that a long time ago. So what else?"

Zeref recounted his earlier conversation with the two women while they cleaned up the table, gathering up all the takeout boxes and consolidating the trash into two bags. When they were done with that, Zeref asked about the cot he'd seen in the study, and Natsu went in search of a spare set of linens. Setting up the coat took no time at all, and they fell silent as they finished. Natsu looked around at the book-laden shelves.

"Is something wrong?" Zeref asked, worried by the odd expression on his partner's face.

Natsu shook his head. "It's nothing. It's... been awhile since I've been in here. There's a spell on the books to keep off the dust, by the way, and to keep them in good order, so you don't have to worry about that."

"I did notice it seemed unusually clean." Zeref hesitated then asked, "Can you tell me anything about these books?"

"Depends on what you want to know. There's a lot of stuff on magical theory, which you'll have to figure out yourself if you're interested. I don't know a whole lot about theory unless it's related to Dragon Magic. Other than that, we collected a bunch of books about dragons."

"You know, there are a lot of stories about dragons in my world too," Zeref said lightly. "Although most of it is mythology. I don't think we've ever had real dragons. Can you tell me more about your dragons? And I can tell you some of the stories I know."

It took a moment for Natsu to pull himself free of whatever memories had caught him.

"Sure. There isn't much to drink in the house other than water right now, but there's a shop just down the street that specializes in hot chocolate if you're interested."

"There's a shop here that specializes in hot chocolate?" Zeref repeated, surprised. "Of course I'm interested."

"You act like you've never had hot chocolate before," Natsu said with a chuckle. He reached out to shut the study window then led the way out into the hall.

"I have," Zeref said, following him. "But not often. Almost never in fact, although I quite liked it. Mother disapproves of sweets. Dark chocolate does have some scientifically proven health benefits, but I think you get similar benefits from exercise and exercise is better for you all around."

"Guess I won't tell her I took you then."

It was Zeref's turn to laugh. "You can tell her, but be prepared to listen to her lecture about the perils of sugar."

Natsu made a face at the thought. "I'll pass, thanks."

The Dragon Slayer went to close the bedroom window as well, pausing to glance at the clock and then at the sky outside to judge the time. He'd forgotten that the clock was broken.

"The shop should be open for at least another hour or two, so we ought to have plenty of time. Then we should try to get some sleep so we're ready for tomorrow."

.

Despite what he had told Zeref, Natsu found later that night that he couldn't sleep. His thoughts kept drifting back to the study and the boy asleep there—and then further back to when he hadn't lived in this house alone.

Damn, being back home like this was stirring up a lot of old feelings and memories. Honestly, it hadn't felt like home at all in such a long time.

The Dragon Slayer sighed, grumbled a bit, and got out of bed, intent on getting a cup of water from downstairs. Out in the hallway, he paused. The study door was ajar, and after a moment, he reached out to close it only to hesitate with his hand on the handle.

Natsu had excellent night vision, and it was easy to make out the boy curled on his side under the blanket. The sight was both familiar and strange, and it made his heart ache a little.

It was getting easier not to confuse little details between this Zeref and the Zeref he had known in the past. By this point, he had spent more time with the current one than he had had with the other, so perhaps that wasn't surprising. Like he had told his friends, the two were very similar but also different. Still, sometimes, he was afraid that he would forget the old Zeref altogether. If Natsu didn't remember him, who would? All that would be left were rumors, outright lies, and worn out legends that had only a tentative basis in truth.

Did that matter? Maybe it shouldn't. He knew Zeref wouldn't care. The one in the past had resigned himself to that fact, whereas the one in the present seemed to have decided that there was no reason for him to dig into a past he couldn't remember anyway. Zeref was happy, and he was here. That was enough, right?

Zeref sighed in his sleep and snuggled further down under the covers so that most of his face was obscured by the light brown blanket. Natsu smiled and quietly shut the study door.

Yes, he decided, that was enough.

It really was time to let the past go. He could start to move forward again. He would never forget what had happened and no doubt it would continue to affect his actions for a long time yet, but it was okay not to dwell on it. And if some of the details became blurry with time, perhaps that, too, was for the best.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	20. Chapter 20

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

20.

Erza read then reread the letter with a frown before slipping it into her pack. She'd contacted Jellal about Zeref's visit, hoping he'd be able to make time to join them, but it seemed that wasn't going to happen. Not for at least another week. This time around on the Council, Jellal was taking his work very seriously. That was good—of course it was—but she did still wish he had a more flexible schedule. That was a major reason they had decided to hold off on having any children.

Jellal had also included a list of places he thought they should avoid.

"Erza?" Lucy called out from the front hall. "You ready to go?"

"Just a second."

Erza grabbed the straps of her pack and slung it over her shoulders. She'd tried her best to cut down, but it was still a pretty hefty bundle. Oh well.

.

They arrived at Natsu's place to find the living room full of writing—glowing words and diagrams all hanging in the air like bizarre party decorations. Zeref stood in the middle of it all, completely engrossed in the light pen in his hands.

"Does it ever run out of ink?"

Natsu scratched his head at the question. "You know, that's a good question. I never thought about it."

Zeref turned the light pen over, fascinated. This was the first time he'd seen a magical artifact that he hadn't created himself.

"I suppose if it writes with magical energy, and that energy is available in the atmosphere... perhaps it's like having an endless supply of ink—as long as the mechanism that converts it into light continues to function. I wonder if I could replicate it at home..."

The Dragon Slayer was grinning when he turned to his friends. They hadn't seen Natsu this happy in a long time. It was a nice change.

"Hey, you ready to go?"

"It looks like we're the ones who should be asking that," Erza said, gesturing at all the glowing patterns clouding the air. It would probably be a few more minutes before they faded, unless they felt like taking the time to erase them all.

"They'll disappear on their own," Natsu said with a shrug. "We were up early, and we ran into this lady selling light pens while we were looking around the marketplace. We're all packed though, so we can leave right away."

"I'll go get my backpack," Zeref said, disappearing up the stairs with the light pen still in his hands.

Erza hadn't thought he was listening, but it appeared she'd been mistaken. He was probably much more observant than he let on too. She'd keep that in mind for future reference.

.

Business in magical vehicle rentals had boomed since the war. The special coaches were redesigned to handle rough terrain better since so many of the roads had suffered damage from the fighting, and with the cross-guild assignment requirement, wizards were traveling more than ever before. The railroads had only recently come back into service, but by then, most of the wizards had grown used to the speed and convenience of magical vehicles, which could be rented and returned at branch shops in most towns and cities.

While the shop mechanics finished checking over their rental to ensure that everything was in order before they took it out, the wizards waited out in front of the garage. Natsu was intensely aware of all the curious glances Zeref was directing at—pretty much everything. He could tell the boy was trying not to be obvious about it like the Dragon Slayer had asked, but the task was apparently proving difficult. Zeref had, after all, grown up listening to Natsu's stories of this place, and he couldn't help being utterly fascinated now that he was seeing everything in person. It was... kind of cute actually, but it also made Natsu tense and edgy.

When had he gotten this suspicious? Natsu wondered when he found himself glaring sidelong at a group of passersby who looked at them a bit longer than the other strangers on the street. At the same time, he couldn't—wouldn't—forget that Zeref was no longer immortal. Nor did he heal as quickly as he had before—not that that had mattered in the end back then. Could anyone really expect the Dragon Slayer not to feel a bit overprotective?

Erza's voice interrupted his thoughts. "You realize that you're not making it any easier for him to fit in and pass unnoticed."

Natsu glanced at her, prepared to pretend he had no idea what she was talking about, but he changed his mind when he met her gaze. There was no judgment or reprimand in her eyes, just open sympathy.

"I can't help it. I keep thinking about everything that could go wrong. If something happens to him, I don't think I'll be able to stay calm. Just imagining it makes me so angry sometimes that I can't think straight."

To her credit, Erza did not respond with immediate reassurances. She could have said that nothing bad would happen. She could have said a lot of things that would have been equally meaningless.

Hell, once upon a time, Natsu would have been the first to declare that they wouldn't _allow_ anything bad to happen. But he could no longer muster that kind of absolute, defiant certainty. Determination, yes—and plenty of it—but not certainty.

Erza knew this. Most of them felt the same way, in fact, so she thought very carefully before she spoke.

"Try not to spend too much time imagining it, especially if it's bloody battlefields that you're imagining. It doesn't do him or you any good, and I highly doubt you're much fun to hang around with when you're angry. Angry people are seldom good company."

Natsu snorted, but didn't smile. After a second, he said, "There wasn't any blood."

Erza blinked. Was he talking about what she thought he was talking about?

Natsu looked away.

"There wasn't any blood," he repeated, then gave his head a hard shake and went over to join Zeref and Lucy where they were studying the chart of different magical vehicles tacked up before the rental shop.

Erza watched him go, taking several seconds to absorb his words. Natsu had told them almost nothing about the Black Wizard's final moments—definitely nothing about where he had been or what state he had been in. It surprised her that the Dragon Slayer said anything about it now. Although... watching Natsu put his arm around their visitor and Zeref turn his head to smile up at him, perhaps she shouldn't be surprised after all.

Funny really. When she'd learned that Natsu was bringing Zeref to Fiore for the summer, she had been prepared to do her best to get to know him. She'd been prepared to make friends, and like Lucy, she'd been painfully curious. She had not expected to feel grateful.

.

All right, so maybe Zeref had been wise in insisting that they make this trip this summer. He wasn't the only one who needed to test out the idea of him living in Fiore. Natsu was starting to think that he and not Zeref was the one who would need time to adjust.

Natsu had been cautious about Zeref's wellbeing in the boy's own world. Here in Fiore, the Dragon Slayer found that he was downright paranoid.

The magic vehicle they had borrowed resembled a carriage with no horses. Erza had volunteered to drive, and so she sat out front while the others looked out from the carriage windows. Or rather, Lucy and Zeref looked out the windows and Natsu looked at Zeref, reminding himself that this was all real and trying to sort out the greater implications of this. Yes, this was what he'd hoped for somewhere in the back of his mind, but frankly, he hadn't allowed himself to fantasize about it. There were a lot of things he hadn't allowed himself to fantasize about for such a long time that it was difficult now to grant himself the luxury.

It used to be so easy to dream.

"That hill looks very strange," Zeref said, poking his head out to look back as their vehicle passed by the landmark in question. "Like it's been cut in half."

Natsu didn't have to see it to know what he was talking about. That hill split straight down the middle like it had been cleaved in two by a gigantic axe remained as a reminder to Magnolia's residents that things were not yet entirely well.

"Yeah, all the magic and fighting during the war really messed up some of the landscape," Natsu explained. "For awhile, there was actually this waterfall that fell up instead of down. That cleared up quickly, but while it lasted, there were major problems with flooding and a lot of the fish died."

"I remember that," Lucy said, seated across from them in the carriage. "I wrote an article about it for a local paper. Job requests for wizards to help out in landscaping projects have been fairly common."

"I see." Zeref looked back out at the green and yellow fields now flowing past them on either side of the road.

Out of the corner of his eye, Natsu caught Lucy glancing his way for the umpteenth time since they'd left the rental shop.

"What?" the Dragon Slayer asked, raising his eyebrows. Sure, he hadn't been home much lately, but he hadn't been gone so long that his friends should have forgotten what he looked like,.

"Oh, um, I was just wondering..." The Celestial Wizard waved her hand emphatically, embarrassed at being caught staring. "Did you see Wendy this morning?"

"Wendy?" Natsu repeated, startled. Then realization dawned and he grinned. "Nah, I've got this for that."

Lucy's brow furrowed and she leaned forward a little to look at the diamond-shaped, silver pin on his vest. There was the image of a set of scales etched upon its face. She hadn't noticed it until he pointed it out, and now that she was seeing it, she had no idea how it answered her question.

"I made it," Zeref offered, responding to her evident confusion. "It's got an anti-motion sickness spell attached to it. In my world, it's far too difficult to get around without using some kind of transportation."

"I know three people who would kill for one of those," Erza called back to them from the driver's seat with amusement. "Wendy can cast anti-motion sickness spells on people, but they wear off. And if you get them too often, they become less effective."

"My mother is a doctor," Zeref explained. "I discussed it with her and did some research on why people actually feel motion sick. I tailored the magic to deal with the specifics."

"Are you a healer then?" Lucy asked. That would certainly be a surprise, all considered.

Zeref shook his head. "No. I can't mend broken bones or heal injuries. That's a lot harder, and I can't seem to make it work."

"So what kind of magic do you use?" she asked, then added, "mostly, I mean."

Since it was obvious he'd dabbled in a wide variety of spells.

"I've been focusing on space manipulation," Zeref answered. "I thought it would be the most practical for me—more or less instant transportation, redirection, and that sort of thing. Traveling with Natsu has helped a lot with developing a sense for shifts in space and dimensions. I haven't worked out how the cross-world part actually happens and I don't think I can do it the same way, but within worlds, it's like—folding paper. It's very difficult across long distances without a focus point and probably too risky to try anyway, but across short distances, it's really quite manageable. Natsu thinks I need more attack spells, but I think the two I've worked on should be plenty. I mean, simple energy blasts seem to cover it. I've got one that affects living things but passes through non-living things and one that's the opposite of that."

Out front, Erza shook her head. Natsu had told them that wizards were extremely rare in Zeref's world. The boy probably had no idea how unusual it was to have such skill with magic, not to mention such flexibility.

Returning the bulk of her attention to the road ahead, Erza adjusted the amount of power she was feeding into the vehicle to slow it down just a fraction. There were several turns coming up, and the surface of the packed dirt path was less than smooth. She should probably be careful.

At least, she thought about being careful until the sound of another vehicle's wheels rattling across the ground reached her ears and she shifted her own ride to the left just in time to avoid getting clipped by another magic vehicle fast overtaking them from behind. She didn't recognize the young driver, but he slowed when their vehicles drew level and waved at her.

When he was sure he had her attention, he cupped his hands around his mouth and raised his voice, "Hey, you up for a race? I'm making adjustments on this beauty for a competition coming up!"

"You might regret it," Erza warned him, eyes gleaming. She was always up for a competition, and there was no point in competing if she didn't aim to win.

Noting the challenge in her smirk, the young man grinned in return, his sun-bleached and wind-tousled blond hair making him look just a tad insane. "Bring it on! On the count of three?"

Inside the magic vehicle, the three other wizards had just enough time to realize what was about to happen and grab for the nearest handhold before Erza took off. The carriage lurched forward, all but throwing them out of their seats. Before they could recollect themselves, the carriage hit the first bend in the road and Erza veered, bringing the vehicle around sharply on two wheels. Inside, the wizards piled against the side, only just managing not to place all their weight against the door. The bottom edge of the window dug painfully into Zeref's side, and for a second, he was afraid he'd fall through it onto the road. This was why cars back home had seatbelts, he thought. Then Natsu had grabbed him and pulled him to his chest, bracing his feet to prevent them from being tossed about.

Their magic vehicle crashed back onto all four wheels, bounced twice, then tipped the other way as Erza turned it again. The vehicle's undercarriage squeaked and creaked in protest, and Zeref struggled to regain the breath that had been knocked out of him.

From outside the window, they heard a shout of laughter from Erza's opponent a little ways ahead of them—and, to the dismay of the three passengers, their carriage picked up speed.

There would be no more sightseeing on this carriage trip. The scenery blew past the open windows, and it wasn't like any of them had the attention to spare on it anyway.

By the time Erza finally brought their vehicle to a careening halt just outside of a bustling town, both Zeref and Lucy were dizzy and slightly nauseous.

The dark-haired boy looked up at the Dragon Slayer, who still had an almost painful grip on him, and said, "I change my mind. I don't think I like magic vehicles that much after all."

They didn't seem all that safe, especially in a world with so little traffic regulation.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **AN:** Hmm, working with this Zeref in the original context of Fiore is turning out harder than I expected. I'm so much more used to him being much more depressed and far less carefree. Not to say that it isn't a nice change. That was kind of the point of writing this story for me. It just feels odd since all his emotional issues were what drew me to his character in the first place. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter.

 **.**


	21. Chapter 21

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

21.

Zeref tried very hard not to stare at the man and woman walking on what looked like empty air as they moved about trimming the higher branches of the trees in the town's public park. He realized how unsuccessful he was being at this when Natsu grabbed the back of his coat and he turned to find a lamppost mere centimeters in front of his face. He looked back up at Natsu, embarrassed.

"Sorry."

The Dragon Slayer shook his head in exasperation, but there was a hint of amusement in his eyes too.

"I suppose I was asking the impossible to begin with." Natsu dropped his hand to the small of Zeref's back. "Come on, they're leaving us behind."

The two started walking again, but Zeref couldn't resist one last look back at the wizards in the park.

"Would it not be incredible to be able to walk on air? Perhaps a special pair of shoes."

Natsu gave this question serious consideration. Mostly, he thought about how a person might go about testing if he were able to walk on air. It would probably be a lot like someone deciding to test whether or not he could fly.

"Yeah, it would be cool, but don't go walking off any cliffs or tall buildings without telling me in advance."

"I'll be careful."

Natsu thought about pointing out that walking into a lamppost wasn't really his idea of being careful, but decided against it. At this moment, it would be a pointless reminder.

Their client turned out to be an old lady, who lived in a townhouse not far from the park. Although the house itself was small, it was richly furnished, and the lady herself was bedecked with so much jewelry that she practically glittered. Then again, none of them knew anything about jewelry, so all of it could have been fake. Still, they couldn't deny that she made a remarkable picture.

"It was a few years after the war," she said, gesturing vaguely with one wrinkled hand. "Before all the magic really settled down. I purchase a great many things from this village in the mountains, and there's this trader who does my bargaining and ships the things for me. Anyway, that time, he'd gotten hold of something very special—a map I've wanted for quite a long time, which is supposed to show the location of an unusual mirror set in a jade frame."

She sighed. "Unfortunately, on his way back, he was caught up in a small landslide. The good news was that he wasn't hurt badly, but the bad news was that he wasn't able to seek out the mirror for me like he'd promised. He did, however, give me the map—eventually."

"And that's why you decided to put in a request to a wizard guild," Erza concluded.

"That's right. After what happened, I thought it would be safer and more practical to hire wizards for the job. That wasn't the first landslide we've had in these mountains. After all the fighting and the magic that got thrown around—well, let's just say that I've waited as long as I've had in the hopes that the mountains would have enough time to settle back down."

Erza nodded. "Understandable. May we see the map?"

.

They had one week. If Lady Ruka hadn't heard back from them by then, she would send word to their guild for help. The wizards doubted it would come to that, but these days, one could never be too careful. It was entirely possible that there was some pocket of magic left in the mountains swallowing up unwary passersby.

Before they set out, however, they had to purchase supplies.

"This store's become very popular since it opened two years ago," Lucy told the newest member of their team.

"Why is that?"

The Celestial Wizard had to consider this for a minute before she could answer, "I guess because camping out has become a lot more interesting. And possibly a lot more dangerous."

The store in question was one of a chain of stores that carried camping equipment and supplies, much of which was enchanted by wizards in the business's partner guild.

While Lucy explained to Zeref about the different items on sale—which included tents be-spelled for temperature regulation and water bottles capable of purifying any water poured inside—Erza pulled Natsu aside.

"I got a letter from Jellal before we left," she said, her expression serious. "He's managed to get you excused from cross-guild missions for a while now, but the other council members are starting to complain. The Dragon Slayers did a lot during the war, so they were willing to be lenient, but it was never meant to be an indefinite waiver."

"I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later," Natsu muttered. "How long have I got?"

"They haven't seriously gotten down to pursuing the subject yet," Erza admitted. "But my guess is not much. They're especially strict about enforcing the rule with powerful wizards, since it's powerful wizards that generally cause the big problems. I suggest that you take some time this summer to go on at least one."

Natsu frowned.

Erza spoke again before he could voice his objection. "Bring him with you. It's not like all that many people knew him. I doubt you'd run into trouble over it. There are also still a lot of repair work and construction jobs that shouldn't involve any fighting or run-ins with Dark Guilds."

The Dragon Slayer hesitated for a second longer then shrugged. "Fine. I'll think about it."

"Natsu," Zeref said, interrupting them as he approached.

He had that look in his eyes caught up somewhere between wonder and fascination that Natsu had begun to associate with potentially hazardous ideas.

"If I enchant my backpack, do you think I'll still be able to bring it home without causing problems?"

"Well, it is still your backpack and your magic. I don't see why not. What exactly were you thinking about enchanting it to do?"

"Nothing extreme," Zeref assured him. "Just to give it more space—and to make it lighter. They sell backpacks like that here, but they're not organized as well as they could be. It wouldn't be very useful if it was too hard to find all the things you put in."

"What did you have in mind instead?"

Natsu listened carefully to Zeref sketch out his plan for creating a backpack that was much bigger on the inside than on the outside that would respond to the user's voice, making sure none of it could lead to anyone, say, sticking an arm in and then losing that arm when something went wrong.

Ugh, the Dragon Slayer wasn't great at all this theoretical stuff, but he was damned well going to learn enough of it to keep track of his partner's thinking. Natsu had never stopped to consider before just how risky fiddling around with new spells and new magic could be—especially if the wizard in question was a powerful one. After all, just because a person decided that it would be cool to design his own shoes for walking on air didn't mean he could make it happen. Zeref just happened to be the kind of wizard who could make it happen.

Erza excused herself and left them to their discussion. She had passed along the information she'd been asked to, and now, it was up to Natsu what he wanted to do about it. Listening to the two wizards made the corners of her mouth twitch. Natsu certainly had his hands full with this one, which might just be a good thing since it got his mind off past ifs and maybes. Erza had always thought of Zeref as a clever inventor and researcher of magic, and he was certainly turning out to be just that.

"Maybe a person could even hide inside," she heard Zeref say.

To which Natsu replied quite emphatically, "No. You know moving things by manipulating space isn't always safe. You threw up that other time, remember? And all you did was warp yourself from the bedroom into the kitchen twenty steps away. We're not trying that sort of thing again until we're sure it works fine on objects. _Fragile_ objects."

"Ah, I suppose that would be best."

"So did you want to buy one of these backpacks? I can get one for you if you want to study it or something."

Briefly, Erza wondered if they should worry about Zeref attracting unwanted attention—not because of his namesake, but because of his natural affinity for magic. Ambitious and unpleasant people were often drawn to talent like that, and Zeref wasn't exactly doing a great job at keeping a low profile. Unlike the Zeref of the past, this one did not have the need for discretion so deeply engrained in him that it made him uncomfortable when strangers so much as looked at him a second longer than usual.

Then again, Erza pitied anyone foolish enough to lay a finger on the boy. All the healing salve in the world wouldn't be enough to fix the burns.

.

The four of them left the store an hour later with an extra backpack, several water bottles, more than a week's supply of food, bug-repelling sleeping bags, and two new tents that they probably weren't going to use unless it began to rain.

Natsu and Erza carried almost all of their supplies between them, and Zeref busied himself examining the enchanted backpack to see just how and why it worked.

Their client had mapped out several routes for them that they could take up into the mountains, but they figured it was best to start with the most straightforward path, which saw a fair amount of use from hikers and traders. So it was a well-stocked and cheerful group of wizards who began up the road into the mountains that afternoon, eager to see how far they could get before nightfall.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	22. Chapter 22

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

22.

They paused to rest partway up the mountain where the path that hugged the mountainside widened into a long, narrow plateau. From this vantage point, they had an excellent view of the entire countryside. It was not quite what Zeref would have expected from such a view. Rather than grassy fields crisscrossed with roads, the area stretching outward from the foot of these mountains was a patchwork of green, brown, and gray. In some places, the vegetation flourished, but in others, it was as though a great fire had charred the earth beyond its ability to recover—at least any time in the near future. Then there were the handful of stony patches, some dotted with oddly still trees, that made him wonder if the plants had been petrified by some strange magic—turned to colorless rock and stone.

"Weird, huh?"

"A little," Zeref said, turning to look up at Natsu. "I know you described it to me, but it's more obvious from up here. And it's all because of the fighting?"

"Yeah, pretty much." The Dragon Slayer's grin was crooked and didn't have much humor behind it. "Turns out the universe doesn't react well to wizards trying to rewrite history. Then there were all the battles with way too many powerful spells being tossed around. No one really stopped to think about what was happening to the scenery."

"Few people ever do during wartime," Zeref replied. The corners of his mouth drew downward at the thought. "I suppose when there are battles to be won, few people have the time or energy to spare on things other than winning or losing."

"Well, there's surviving too," Natsu said, "but you're right. Sometimes, winning seemed more important."

Zeref hesitated, unsure whether his partner was actually okay with talking about this, then asked, "I'm guessing you did a lot of fighting?"

Fighting was certainly something Natsu seemed quite fond of, judging from the stories he'd told Zeref over the years. Although at the same time, Zeref suspected—from the brief glimpses he had had of Natsu in battle—that the war had turned fighting into something a lot more serious than it had been to the dragon wizard before.

"You guess right. All the Dragon Slayers did a lot of fighting. We tend to be really good at that—fighting, blowing things up, tearing them apart." Natsu shrugged. "Our magic is explosive, and we're good at large-scale battles, even by ourselves. Maybe especially by ourselves, since it's easier to cut loose when you don't have to worry about hurting your allies."

Natsu had not spoken this freely to him about the war since their first conversation about past lives, and Zeref debated with himself whether or not to ask more questions. Additional information was nice, but at the same time, he wasn't sure how much he actually wanted to know or what Natsu was willing to recount.

Finally, he settled for, "How did it all start anyway? If you don't mind me asking."

The Dragon Slayer considered.

"You know, I'm not entirely sure. It's hard to pick an exact starting point for these things, and Dark Guilds kind of have to try to do things in secret. The first sign that something was going wrong, though, was when this town near Crocus disappeared."

"You mean it just vanished?"

"Yeah, like it had never been there, or like it was just a story that we'd heard about. It was strange because even though we all knew—or thought we knew—it had once existed, nobody could remember the name or face of anyone who lived there—or even what the name of the town was."

Zeref's brow furrowed.

"But if nobody could actually remember the town, how did you know anything was wrong?"

"We didn't at first," the Dragon Slayer replied. "For awhile, everyone was just confused. You were the one who suggested something wizardly had happened, and it was because your memory went so far back. It made it easier for you to notice discrepancies."

The corners of the dragon wizard's mouth turned downward, and Zeref wondered if that meant he should drop the topic. He was saved from having to make a decision when Erza called to them from where she was sitting on a boulder at the side of the road with Lucy.

"Hey, you two. We could use your input on this treasure map if you're done with the sightseeing."

.

Zeref brightened visibly at the reminder, and Natsu had to grin. It was nice to see Zeref so excited, and his excitement chased away the grim atmosphere that had settled around them. Besides, the sun was shining, the sky was clear, and the mountain air was clean and fresh.

"Let's go see," Zeref said, and Natsu slung an arm around his shoulders as they walked back to meet the others.

The Dragon Slayer caught a flicker of bemusement on his teammates faces, and the sight made his grin turn wicked. They hadn't known what to expect—Natsu understood that. But it was still kind of funny how this Zeref confused them. In the past, all they had known of him—all they had been _able_ to know of him—was a slight figure in the distance surrounded, more often than not, by dead grass and withered leaves.

They had never had the chance to see Zeref smile.

"It looks more like a riddle than a map," the boy in question was muttering to himself, turning the paper around to examine it from a different angle. "Which side was supposed to be up? Oh, I see. The mapmaker marked the direction of the sun instead of just drawing a compass."

Natsu glanced over his shoulder to see what he was looking at. He loved listening to Zeref think out loud, which the shorter wizard was prone to doing quite often. Kind of like how, in the past, he used to have a habit of talking to himself. The Black Wizard hadn't had all that many choices.

"Is that a snake?" Natsu asked, referring to the ink sketch that ran from the lower left to the upper right corner of the map.

"It certainly looks like one," Zeref said. "I don't suppose we have a regular map of this area?"

A brief search of their travel bags produced a regular map, which they held up beside the treasure map.

"Not much of a resemblance," Erza observed dryly.

The others had to agree.

After another long minute of contemplation, Lucy spoke up, "It might be a bit farfetched, but what about that ravine to the west? It's called Kane's Ravine. If you rearrange the letters, you can get the word snake. And it's... kind of the right shape..."

That was to say, the giant snake that spanned the width of the treasure map was wiggly in about the same way as the outline of the ravine was wiggly... Very broadly speaking.

"It's as good a place to start as any," Natsu said cheerfully. "Let's get going. We've got a treasure to find!"

"I thought we were supposed to be resting," Erza said with a shake of her head.

"Resting?" Natsu managed to fill the word with so much incredulity that his two old friends had to laugh. It made him sound so much more like the Natsu they remembered. "We don't need more rest. Who knows who else might be looking for it?"

.

As luck would have it, Natsu's casual remark turned out not to be so groundless.

"Don't tell me you're looking for the Dreamer's Mirror too," the thin man with the goatee said, dismayed. His watery blue eyes darted from the map in his hands to the suspiciously similar piece of paper in Zeref's.

The two groups stood facing one another where two of the mountain paths joined and continued on to run along the side of Kane's Ravine. The ravine itself was so deep that its floor was lost in shadow.

"Our client is very important," the thin man's rather stout, male companion told them, straining the brass buttons of his checkered vest by puffing out his chest. "You should just give up now and leave this treasure to us."

Natsu cracked his knuckles.

"You're the ones who should give up if you want to make it home in one piece."

"Hold on a second, the third member of the group of treasure hunters—a lanky woman with her dark hair done up in a braid that hung all the way down to the back of her knees—spoke up. "What's the point in fighting now when neither of us has the mirror yet? Whichever team finds the mirror first ought to have the right to keep it."

"I'd say that's fair," Erza conceded, letting the sword she had summoned vanish again in a shower of pink light. Her eyes gleamed and she gave them her own challenging smile. "But be warned. We're more than ready to fight if you get in our way."

The stout man snorted.

"Same to you. Just because you're wizards doesn't mean we're scared of you."

"You should be scared of us if you know what's good for you," Natsu told them. "Our magic's on a whole different level these days. You wouldn't stand a chance."

"Whatever, we'll just be going on ahead then."

The thin man waved at his companions, and the three hunters swung themselves out over the edge of the ravine and began climbing down the sheer rock wall into its depths.

"I can definitely make it down there faster than they can," Natsu said, watching the strangers' progress. "Although I have to admit, for a fat guy, that man can climb fast."

"I don't think we have to climb down though," Zeref said, placing his hand on Natsu's arm to prevent him from doing just that. "Look, whoever drew this map sketched a second snake under the main one with its mouth open. See?"

Not only that, but there was a tiny mouse sketched in the serpent's open maw.

"You can make out some of the coils peeking out on either side," Zeref continued. "I think there might be tunnels running through the walls of this ravine, and that there's an entrance somewhere around here."

"I vote we look around to see if he's right," Lucy said, casting a nervous glance down into the jagged chasm in the earth. "I mean, the treasure isn't marked on the map as actually being in the ravine, right? So there has to be an alternative route. Or this ravine could just be a reference point."

"So where _is_ the treasure marked on the map?" Erza asked, taking the paper from Zeref so she could examine it again for herself.

"You see that fish next to the snakes? It's got a round eye with a star in it. And there's writing next to it too."

Everyone crowded around to look.

"For those who long to see strange lands," Erza read aloud. "Hmmm, it's easier to see with more light behind it..."

She lifted the map so that the sun was behind it. Immediately, the animal sketches became less visible while the words grew more stark against the yellowish paper. There was a lot more than just the one line beside the fish's eye.

"Any clues for getting into the tunnels?" Natsu asked.

Erza squinted, speaking slowly, "The snake you see is brown and green. But mice can always find what lies unseen. Hmmm."

The four wizards contemplated this for a minute then decided unanimously to search the area for ideas. Inspiration came in the form of several large boulders arranged at intervals along the first stretch of the zigzagging path that ran along the left side of the chasm.

"They're gray," Natsu pointed out, bracing his hands against the side of one boulder and shoving it aside by a couple centimeters. "A lot of mice are gray too, right? And practically everything else around here is brown and green."

The first and second boulders yielded nothing but brown stone and dirt. The third, however, shifted grudgingly aside to reveal the mouth of a cave.

Zeref called up a light and they peered into the darkness. A mouse was carved into the cave wall not far from the entrance, its long nose pointed inward and its tail an S-shaped squiggle behind it.

"There's a tunnel further in that goes right," Natsu said, his eyes more keen than the others in the dimness.

"Can you make that light float ahead of us?" Erza asked, summoning a sword and gesturing at Zeref's spell light with the tip of the blade.

In answer, he tossed the light forward and up where it came to rest a litttle ways above and ahead of them, shedding a soft, pale glow.

"I wish I could do that," Lucy said, following Erza into the cave. "It would be pretty handy."

Natsu waited for Zeref to walk ahead of him before entering the cave himself. He wanted to keep his partner where he could see him. He almost walked into him though when the boy suddenly stopped and began to rummage through his backpack.

"Problem?" Natsu asked.

Zeref shook his head. "No, just give me a minute. I have an idea."

When he found the light pen, Zeref slung the backpack back over his shoulders. The others stopped to watch as he used the light pen to write a string of glowing characters all along the cave mouth—across the floor and up along the walls. Natsu moved to stand behind him, scanning the characters as they appeared. He recognized the shorthand that Zeref had developed for taking notes on magic and sometimes weaving spells.

"It looks like a variation on one of your shield spells," he said—both a comment and a question.

"It is," Zeref confirmed, finishing with a looping mark meant to tie the whole spell together and set it in motion. "Only I'm adding a twist in space so that if anyone walks into it, the spell will turn them around and send them back the way they came. I was working on it because I thought it would be more confusing for opponents to deal with than a regular wall-type shield. There are still some problems with it, but it will stop those treasure hunters from following us this way."

"Good thinking," Erza said before Natsu could ask him about the problems. "How long will it last?"

"Um, I don't know."

The admission seemed to embarrass him, and he looked at Natsu for help.

The Dragon Slayer explained for him, "I've mentioned before that magic's uncommon in his world, right? So he doesn't get much chance to practice any spells on a large scale, and any magic we do use has to be kept invisible or cleaned up immediately to avoid drawing attention."

"I see. That makes this a great opportunity for you to figure out the range and duration of your spells."

Zeref acknowledged Erza's comment with a nod. That was the plan.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **.**


	23. Chapter 23

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

23.

Despite having been blocked off, the air within the network of tunnels held no trace of staleness or dust. There were probably other entrances—or, at the very least, other cracks and openings where fresh air could flow in.

After the first section of cave and tunnel, it wasn't all that dark either, thanks to a pale moss festooning the walls that let off a faint, cool light. The ground beneath their feet sloped ever downward, and the deeper they went underground, the more common the glowing moss became until Zeref let his own wizard light fade entirely. No point wasting energy, even if he did have a lot of energy at his disposal.

"There's water up ahead," Natsu said. "A lot of it."

"A lot of it" was right. The underground lake before them was so vast that even Natsu couldn't see its opposite shore. Its smooth surface looked black in the glow from the moss that clung to the cavern's walls and ceiling, and the thin layer of sand along the shore where they stood glittered like ground crystal.

"Are we supposed to cross this?" Zeref asked, eyeing the lake dubiously. "It doesn't look very sanitary."

"Doesn't smell very sanitary either," Natsu told him. "I can see an island out there, but it looks empty to me. If the ceiling was higher, I could have flown across."

But as things stood, if he transformed here, he'd probably squash all his teammates.

"It's too bad Gray couldn't come with us," Lucy mused, kneeling by the edge of the water and peering into its depths. "We could have just walked across on the ice."

"I don't know," Erza replied, her gaze fixed on a point further from shore. "Something tells me walking across wouldn't have been so easy."

Before Lucy could ask what she meant, there was a splash and something surfaced from beneath the water. They caught a glimpse of muddy green scales and long, sharp spines before whatever it was submerged once more, leaving behind only a series of ripples.

"That is a very large fish," Zeref observed. "Are all the fish in this world that large?"

"No," Lucy said, not taking her eyes from the ripples that continued to disturb the water's surface. "I'm pretty sure most of our fish are normal sized."

The creature in the lake was weaving its way closer to shore, and it was starting to make her palms sweat. Their glimpse of it had reminded her more of a rather enormous and ugly eel than a fish.

At that moment, the fish suddenly picked up speed and swam straight towards them, its serrated dorsal fin and spines cutting through the water like a shark's. They took a step back on reflex—just as the creature reached the shore and burst from the water in a spray of murky droplets. And it turned out that the fish wasn't quite a fish after all, because it had six short, crocodilian legs that motored it across the sand in a blur of glistening scales and needle-like teeth.

Natsu swore and dragged his partner out of the way while the other two wizards ran in the opposite direction. The crocodile eel swung its long, pebbly snout towards the first two humans who had moved, and Natsu retaliated with a fireball—that caught a gas pocket and exploded, throwing all of them off their feet and sending tremors running through the walls and floor of the cavern. Chips of stone, shaken loose, showered down on top of them and pattered into the lake water.

Natsu swore again. He didn't want to bring the roof down on them.

"Run!" Lucy shouted, scrambling back up the beach towards the tunnel. If she didn't suggest it, retreat would never occur to either of her more combative teammates. At least—that would have held true in the past. She was a little surprised to realize that Natsu was already running after her, half dragging Zeref after him.

Oh, that's right. The Dragon Slayer's priorities had changed somewhat over the past few years. She should have realized that, and her heart ached a little at how hard that time had been for him. It was never easy to watch your friends grieve.

Erza threw a sword at the hideous creature, allowed herself a moment of surprise when the blade glanced off its mottled hide, then sprinted after them.

Sand sprayed up around the creature's stubby but powerful legs as it pursued them up from the water's edge. Its long, flat tail left a sweeping trail in its wake, wiping away its own footprints as it charged.

"Are there a lot of creatures in this world that eat people?" Zeref asked, glancing back over his shoulder as they ran.

"Depends on what you consider a lot," Natsu said. "Stop looking back. It slows you down."

Zeref forced himself to stop staring at the rows of gleaming little teeth in a set of massive jaws and looked forward instead. At least the glowing moss made it easy to see even though they were underground, which was especially fortuitous as the lake monster followed them into the tunnels. Its cries, which were more hiss than roar, echoed along the winding passageways, making it sound like an entire pack of the creatures were on their heels—or should that be a pod? Or a school? Or what about a herd?

"We're almost at the entrance," Lucy called back.

All of them sped up—or they would have except suddenly, Lucy was running back towards them, and her three companions had been moving too quickly to stop. They collided and ended up in a heap on the floor, which shook as their pursuer crashed along the tunnel behind them.

"Sorry!" Lucy gasped. "I don't know what happened."

"No, I'm sorry," Zeref said, stumbling to his feet. "It's my fault. I did say that the spell on the cave mouth wasn't perfected. It, ah, works both ways."

"Wait, so it keeps other people out, but it keeps us in too?"

"Um, basically, yes. Just give me a second to remove it."

"No need," Natsu said, moving past him and slamming a fistful of fire into the barrier. There was a flash of gold, and then the barrier simply dissolved, the magic that powered it eaten away.

"I didn't know you could do that," Zeref said, fascinated. "That's amazing."

"You can be amazed later," Natsu replied, grabbing his wrist again to pull him forward and out into the sunlight. "Run now, and I'll tell you all about it when we're not being chased by monster fish."

Zeref couldn't help it.

"I think it looks more like a crocodile."

" _Run_!"

The moment all of them were out on the mountain pathway, Natsu turned back and attacked. The fish monster reeled back when a flaming fist caught it in the snout, startled by the sudden turn of events. Its less than bright mind still scrambling to understand the situation, it resorted to what it generally resorted to and tried to bite its attacker. Instead, it got a mouthful of spell fire and let out a cry of pain. At this point, it finally seemed to realize that maybe it had attempted to eat the wrong group of humans, and it retreated, still hissing as it backed hurriedly along the path it had taken from its lake.

Natsu didn't let the flames die until he was sure the creature was really gone. Guess it wasn't that stupid after all.

Still, looked like it was back to the drawing board as far as the mirror was concerned.

And maybe a snack. A snack sounded good.

Zeref came to stand beside him and peered back down the tunnel. "It seems like I need to learn to think ahead more about the spells that I use and when I use them. All this is more complicated than I thought."

.

Natsu peered over his partner's shoulder at the notebook in his hands.

"Why are you drawing that crocodile monster?"

"I want to learn everything I can about this world," Zeref explained, sketching in some of its pebbly scales. "Besides, I promised my father that I'd bring him possible story material."

Natsu wondered how that conversation was going to go.

 _Hi, Dad, this is the monster that came out of the lake to try and eat us._

He could just imagine what Zeref's parents were going to think. Then again, there had been the seal shark incident in their world, so perhaps they wouldn't be that surprised.

"Well, now that we know these are tunnels," Lucy said, tracing the various pathways on the treasure map, "it looks like there should be several other ways to reach that island in the lake. Is there any point though? Natsu did say it seemed to be bare."

Erza took a sip of her water and said, "If we can, we should still double check it. If someone or something's already taken the mirror, we might be able to find some clues on the island as to who."

"That makes sense," Lucy conceded. "Hmmm, in that case, I think we should try looking closer to the other end of the ravine."

Zeref finished scribbling a few comments on the crocodile monster then shut his notebook and picked up the rest of his unfinished honey cake from beside him. Idly, he leaned to the side and peered down into the shadows of the chasm beside them. It went very far down, and the sheer walls were pockmarked with alcoves.

"Do you think those treasure hunters are all right?" he asked. "I imagine that that creature in the lake isn't the only monster living around here."

Natsu snorted. "Don't worry about them. They might not be wizards, but people don't get to be professional treasure hunters without developing some self defense skills."

"Professional treasure hunters?" Zeref repeated. "You mean it's an actual profession?"

"Yeah, got their own guilds too. Didn't I mention that? We've run into their members on more than a handful of jobs."

"It's just strange to think of people treasure hunting for a living. It's the kind of thing that only really happens in fiction in my world."

"Is that so?" Erza leaned forward, her own honey cake long since eaten. "So what are some of the common professions in your world?"

"That's a good question." Zeref thought for a moment. "It sort of depends on where you live, although computer programming is quite popular in a lot of places."

At which point he had to explain—with some difficulty—what computers were and what it meant exactly to write programs for them. Natsu's attention wandered back to the ravine after the first few sentences. He'd heard about all this before, and he'd had the benefit of seeing an actual machine.

Something about a few of the alcoves bothered him. It had to do with the shape of some of them. They didn't look natural—they were too round and too regular, but neither did they look manmade.

Oh well, if it was important, they'd find out soon enough.

The second time they ventured into the tunnels, they noticed right away a series of markings upon the walls—columns upon columns of markings that stretched from ceiling to floor starting a handful of paces past the tunnel mouth. They looked very much like writing, but unfortunately, none of them could actually read it.

"I wonder what kind of people used to live here," Zeref mused, hanging back to examine an unusual section of writing that had been carved in a spiral design rather than a column. A jagged crack ran straight through it, distorting a number of the markings, but most of them were still quite clear. "You know, I think I saw something similar in one of the books back at your house. That might mean some of these are magical runes."

Natsu cleared his throat, and Zeref realized that he'd stopped walking entirely. He hastened to rejoin his partner, who had stopped to wait for him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm worrying you, aren't I?"

Natsu sighed a little ruefully. "No, I'm just being paranoid. I know you can take care of yourself, but I can't promise you I'll get over it. I _am_ glad you're having fun though."

"A lot of fun," Zeref agreed with a smile that made the Dragon Slayer's heart skip a beat. "I'm sorry if it's making me less cautious than I ought to be, but you really don't have to worry about me. I promised you I'd make every effort to look after myself, and I will. I just want us to enjoy this time that we have together here. One summer's really not that long, and who knows when the next time will be after school starts up again?"

"Even while getting chased by monster fish."

"Even then."

It had been a long time since Natsu or any of his friends had been able to look upon adventures with such simplicity. Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure if that was a safe way to be thinking about all of this, but then—he _had_ chosen this job because he didn't think it would get particularly dangerous or complicated. They were also unlikely to run into any dark wizards, and if they did, Natsu was there to deal with them.

"I'm sure I'll get over the novelty eventually," Zeref added. "But for now, I'm choosing to be excited."

Natsu thought about what his partner had said as they made their way after the others. The boy had a point. There was no telling when they would be able to make this trip across worlds again once this summer was over. They ought to work hard to make the best of it. Still... Natsu couldn't quite bring himself to approve of Zeref looking upon being chased by monsters as an "exciting" experience.

"Hmmm, I think we must have taken a wrong turn back there, because it looks like this is a dead end," Erza said, stopping where the tunnel opened out into yet another cavern. Unlike the natural caves they'd seen previously, however, this one was a perfect square with more than a dozen of the same, spiral writing that Zeref had been inspecting earlier carved into three of its four walls. Unlike the one back in the tunnel, these were whole and unblemished.

"Is that what I think it is?" Lucy asked, moving to one of the spirals in the far right corner. Once there, she bent and picked something up from the floor.

Natsu glanced at the object in her hands and raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that the butterfly pin that woman treasure hunter was wearing?"

"That's what I thought. Does that mean those guys were here? But how did she lose this?"

The wizards looked around, but other than the pin, there was nothing. No signs of struggle or violence, nor any other route the group could have taken out of there that might have caused them to drop anything or prevented them from returning for it. The pin was gold and the white pearl set upon it looked like quality stuff. It wasn't the kind of thing a treasure hunter lost without noticing.

Joining Lucy before the far wall, Zeref examined the spiral carving and laid a hand at its center.

"That's odd. The stone is warm."

He'd hardly finished his sentence when the room flooded with green light. When the brilliance faded, both Zeref and Lucy were nowhere to be seen.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

 **AN** : Eh, sorry if that was a little odd. This was mostly a humor chapter for my own amusement. The next one will be more serious.

Yes, I agree that it would be very easy in this story for Zeref to get into trouble with dark wizards because of his skills as a wizard. I'm not planning on dealing with that sort of thing in this story though.

.


	24. Chapter 24

**Disclaimer** : I do not own Fairy Tail.

 **Pairing(s)** : Natsu Dragneal x Zeref

 **WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation,** **shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read**

* * *

 **Dreaming of Dragons**

 **By V. Shalyr**

* * *

24.

When the world spun back into focus and the two wizards dropped the six feet or so to the hard and unforgiving stone floor, Zeref's first, slightly dazed thought was that of _course_ this would happen right after he'd finished telling Natsu that he didn't have to worry about him. He hoped the Dragon Slayer wasn't too upset. His second thought was that whoever had designed this transportation system or whatever it was could have done their calculations better. Unless, of course, the idea had been to knock any intruders about a bit before capturing them. In that case, the designers had done their calculations perfectly.

Zeref sat up, wincing. The side of his head throbbed where he'd struck it against what turned out to be the statue of some ferocious looking animal, and he lifted a hand to feel the spot gingerly. There was definitely going to be a bruise, but his hair would hide it and at least there wasn't any blood.

A few paces away, Lucy levered herself into a sitting position with a groan. "Oww. What was that about?"

"So much for you all being wizards," a man's voice said from somewhere nearby.

The two wizards turned to find the three treasure hunters they'd encountered before seated around a crystal bracelet that was emitting a golden light bright enough to illuminate the entire chamber in which they now found themselves.

"You got caught in that spell too?" Lucy asked. She wasn't sure if it was good or bad that she and Zeref hadn't been the only ones. On the one hand, these treasure hunters appeared to have quite a number of useful, magical items on them. On the other, they were still here, which meant the three had no more idea than they on how to escape. One glance told her the chamber had no exits, although there was a pool in one corner, formed by the water trickling through a spout that protruded from the wall. There were two narrow vents in the ceiling as well, but the only things that were going to escape through those were ants.

"Obviously," the thinner of the two men replied. "You might as well sit down and wait. We've sent for help, but it'll take awhile for the message to reach someone. Unless your friends can get us out of here..."

Lucy was sure Natsu and Erza would be trying, but it was hard to say how long it would take them—assuming they didn't just end up getting transported here too. Speaking of which... She turned to Zeref.

"Do you think you could use magic to get us back?"

"Um, Natsu said not to—use my magic to transport people, I mean. It didn't go well last time I tried."

"I'm sure you could make an exception this time. I mean, we don't really have many choices here."

Zeref coughed. It wasn't just that he'd thrown up. He hadn't been able to keep any food down for two days because of the nausea. Even his parents had been worried, and with Natsu and his parents all strongly objecting to him experimenting with self teleportation... Well, they were the three people in his life he cared about most. It was hard to argue with that. Besides, if he put himself in their shoes, he had to admit that he wouldn't want them trying out such spells either, not until the magic was proven more safe.

Come to think of it, hadn't they just been teleported by a spell? But he didn't feel all that disoriented. How had the architects of this place managed to make that work?

With renewed interest, Zeref moved to the nearest wall and began inspecting the inscriptions and images that covered it. Like he'd said to Natsu, he seemed to recall seeing similar markings in a book on old magic from the study in the Dragon Slayer's house. Too bad he hadn't read it more closely when he'd had the chance.

"Maybe I can learn something from the magic that brought us here that will make my own transportation magic more reliable. It will take me some time though."

"Well, we've got plenty of that," the woman from the trio said, rising to her feet. "I have some knowledge of that writing system, if that would help."

"It would, thank you."

With nothing else to do, Lucy joined the remaining treasure hunters and settled down to wait. When she finally looked away from the two who were busy scribbling notes in Zeref's notebook, she found the stout man pulling a flat, wooden box from his pack. When he unlatched and opened it, she discovered that it was a game board composed of light and dark brown squares.

"Chess?" he asked.

Well, it wasn't like there was anything else to do around here.

"Okay, but just so you know, I'm not very good."

The man shrugged. "No problem. Neither am I."

The other man chuckled and said, "I'll play the winner."

.

It was impossible to keep track of time with no view of the outside, and the two watches they had amongst them were both acting strangely. After working for what felt like hours, they settled down for a break and some food, completely exhausted.

"The water here doesn't look very clean," Miyami, the hunter Zeref had been working with, informed them as she sat down. "So we'll have to ration what we have."

"Oh, we got something for that," Zeref said, digging through his pack until he found the enchanted water bottle he'd bought from the travel store. "It's a water purifier."

He moved over to the spout in the wall to fill it, then held up the clear container so they could all watch as the liquid inside changed color from a translucent brownish green to a glassy transparency.

"What do you think happened to the dirt?" Zeref wondered. "It can't just disappear. That wouldn't make sense."

Carl, the skinnier of the two male treasure hunters, waved an impatient hand at the bottle. "Who cares? It's magic. It doesn't have to make sense."

Zeref's brow furrowed. "Actually, it kind of does... Have to make sense, I mean."

"Whatever. Just give that here. I've got cups."

Lucy giggled. It was nice to have something to laugh about. Even with the light of the hunters' crystal bracelet and the mage light Zeref had called up, the chamber was starting to feel shadowy and oppressive.

"You know," Miyami said, regarding the shorter girl, "now that I've had a longer look at you, you seem slightly familiar."

"I do?" That was surprising. "I don't think I've ever seen you before though."

Miyami frowned thoughtfully. "Have you ever been to Lily Town? It's a small place at the foot of the mountains."

Lucy sorted back through her memories for the name. It did ring a bell. When it finally clicked where she'd heard it before, however, she shivered.

"I think I helped with the evacuations there."

The location of the town had been a key point in the dark wizards' mass enchantment, so the fighting had been fierce. The part that stuck in Lucy's mind, however, were the long hours sitting in the dark cave where they had all taken shelter, listening to the frightened murmurs of the townsfolk and hoping that the Dark Guilds wouldn't stumble upon them. With most of her companions still locked in battle back at the town, there was only her and Mirajane to stand between an attack and these people who had been caught in the crossfire.

Miyami snapped her fingers. "That's it. You were one of the wizards protecting the refugees."

Her triumph at having identified the wizard faded, replaced by a distant solemnity. "I should thank you. Those were bad times."

The stout treasure hunter, Koga, grunted. "You forget, though, that it was magic that caused all that trouble in the first place. No offense to you two, you seem like decent enough folk, but I often think this world would be better off if we had never discovered magic at all."

"Surely, wizards have done some good too...?" Zeref said, half a comment and half a question.

"There are always exceptions," the man conceded, his bushy brows drawing together. "But I've yet to witness any that wouldn't have been solved by not having magic in the first place."

"Hmmm, I see."

Zeref sank into a thoughtful silence, his gaze drifting to the glowing crystal upon the floor. For the rest of the conversation, which drifted back and forth between the unhappy past and the present, he only listened and said nothing more.

They opted to try and sleep a bit after that before resuming their work, and Carl, whose treasure the crystal bracelet was, stowed the trinket away so that its glow wouldn't disturb them.

Unfortunately, Lucy found sleep to be elusive. Instead, she lay awake, listening to the sound of Zeref tinkering with the water bottle and murmuring to himself while he took notes in the air with the light pen; it was too dark for regular writing. Apparently, he couldn't sleep either. He'd tried for awhile then gotten up to do whatever it was he was doing. She wondered what was on his mind. The memories on hers weren't really ones she wanted to dwell upon. Well, it didn't hurt to ask.

Rolling onto her side to face the corner he had appropriated for himself, the Celestial Wizard opened her eyes and whispered, "Can't sleep?"

It was difficult to see him through the darkness, but she could locate him by the faint glimmer of the drawings glowing in the air around him.

Zeref paused in his tinkering and replied just as quietly so as not to disturb the others, "No. I'm sorry if I woke you."

"You didn't," she assured him. "Is something bothering you, or are you just too excited to sleep? I mean, you don't have to tell me. I was just curious. To be honest, you're a little confusing."

"Am I?" He definitely sounded amused. "A lot of people thought so while I was growing up. Even my parents. A lot of people probably still think so. Just not Natsu. It never mattered to him that I wasn't interested in what most people my age were interested in and didn't care about what most of them cared about. He listened to whatever I wanted to talk about, and he told me all sorts of stories. I'm not sure if they were all true, but that doesn't really matter. They were all very interesting."

He paused then added, "It's hard to sleep sometimes when he's not around. For years, he was always there... Whenever things happened during the day that upset me, I knew he'd be there when I slept and everything would be okay."

"Because he was there for you."

"Yes."

"He'll always be there for you, you know," she said seriously. "Even if you don't get to meet him in your dreams anymore. He's one of the most reliable people I've ever met."

"I know."

And Lucy could hear in his voice how much that meant to him—and that yes, he did know.

This was not the kind of conversation Lucy would have ever predicted having with the former Black Wizard, but then none of them aside from Natsu had ever really gotten to know him. Zeref's enthusiasm and innocent curiosity throughout the day had made Lucy forget that he was still a complicated person. If Natsu was right—and he probably was, all considered—then Zeref was also a very thoughtful and sensitive one. And unfortunately, the world was often all too unkind to thoughtful and sensitive people.

Lucy and the others had tried to convince Natsu not to interfere so much in Zeref's new life, but perhaps that had been wrong of them. They had been afraid that Natsu was growing too obsessed, if that was even possible. They had been afraid... that he would be disappointed, that he would not be as important to this new Zeref as Zeref was to him. Obviously, they hadn't understood the couple very well.

Although they would have understood better, Lucy thought grumpily, if Natsu hadn't refused to talk to them about—about everything that had anything to do with his partner. It was well and good to treasure one's memories, but it wasn't like sharing them would cause him to lose anything. At least Lucy didn't think so. Natsu obviously felt differently.

"I hope Natsu's not too worried," Zeref said, sounding rather worried about this himself. "He gets very... upset when he thinks something bad might happen to me."

Lucy guessed that "very upset" was an understatement.

"And he can be a bit extreme," Zeref added.

"That hasn't changed," Lucy noted aloud. "He's been like that for as long as I've known him. The guild used to get a lot of bills for property damage whenever Natsu, Erza, or Gray went on jobs."

"That doesn't surprise me," Zeref said. "It took me a long time to explain to Natsu why he had to be careful about fighting in my world."

Lucy's eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting, and she could see a fond smile on Zeref's lips when he spoke of the Fire Dragon Slayer. It was such a foreign expression on his face to her that it was just a tad bit creepy, but... not in a bad way. Yes, she thought. They could get used to having him around as part of the team. And it wouldn't be a difficult adjustment at all.

Zeref set the water bottle down and rested his light pen on his knee. "Can I... ask you something?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"What that hunter said... about magic causing a lot of problems... Do you think it's true?"

Lucy frowned a little. "Well, I can't honestly say that it hasn't caused problems, although it's been fun too. Being a wizard."

"Hmmm." He tilted his head and seemed to be looking somewhere far away. "Awhile ago, some of my classmates asked me to teach them magic. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, and I talked it over with Natsu. He said... that I should use my own judgment and decide whether I thought they would abuse that knowledge. He said that magic is a tool and can be used for good or bad things, and that it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to introduce it into my world or not."

"Natsu said that?"

The dark-haired wizard nodded.

It still felt strange sometimes, Lucy reflected, how critically the Dragon Slayer thought about things these days. Then again, they were all a bit like that now, weren't they?

"So... do you regret the decision you made?"

Zeref refocused on her, and Lucy thought with some surprise that he looked troubled. She hadn't seen him this serious all day, although... Perhaps this was the Zeref that Natsu knew, the one that lay under the thrill of traveling through a land he'd dreamed of throughout his childhood.

"I don't know," he admitted quietly. "I don't want to, and I hope that nothing happens in the future that will cause me to do so."

A somber silence settled between them. Lucy's gaze wandered to the monster statues that stood in the four corners of the chamber. The faint glimmer from Zeref's notes cast ghostly highlights across their snarling faces that made the creatures seem even more threatening.

"I hope those statues don't attack us in our sleep," she said, thinking out loud to herself.

"Is that likely to happen?"

The Celestial Wizard made a face. "Don't sound so interested. That's not something we want to happen."

Zeref rested a hand on the statue next to him and inspected the stone. "I don't think it's enchanted."

"That's a relief."

Zeref glanced back at his notes then at Lucy. "You don't have to keep me company."

"I can't sleep either," Lucy admitted. "I guess there's a little too much on my mind too."

Slowly, he nodded. "About the war."

Lucy winced. "Is it that obvious?"

He shrugged. "All of you get this particular look in your eyes when you're thinking about the past. When Natsu looks that way, it means I should stop asking questions."

"You're curious about it then?"

"Yes and no," he said after a moment's contemplation. "I think I can imagine a lot of it just based upon what I've seen so far and the bits that Natsu has told me."

Lucy hesitated, weighing the offer in her mind for a second before making it, "I don't really like to think about it either, but I can try to answer some of your questions if you want."

His gaze when it met hers again was pensive and thoughtful. "It doesn't really have anything to do with the war—I don't think. But... I don't suppose you know how Natsu and I met? The past me, I mean. Natsu won't tell me."

Ah. Lucy wasn't surprised. She could only imagine how awkward that conversation would have been. It was weird enough coming from her, and she hadn't been involved at all. She glanced over towards the treasure hunters, listening carefully to make sure they were all, indeed, asleep before she answered. Even so, she lowered her voice further just in case.

"Er, how do I say this? He, um, was kind of recruited along with a number of other guild wizards by the Magic Council to try and, ah, get rid of you—before this other Dark Guild could get a hold of you. I don't know how anyone found out that you were still alive. I mean, Natsu did tell you that you were more than four hundred when you met, right?"

When he nodded, Lucy continued. "Somehow, this Dark Guild had found a way to locate you, and the Council got wind of what they were doing. Everyone just sort of assumed that, if the dark wizards got to you first, you'd side with them. Of course, we know now that that probably wouldn't have happened, but that's what people thought at the time. Honestly, you were always a little hard to understand, and you didn't really help make things easier. I think... that you were too used to people not understanding."

The Celestial Wizard grew quiet, her thoughts drifting back to that rather odd series of events.

"The Council gathered a bunch of powerful fighters from the different guilds and sent them all to this place in the mountains. But the dark wizards were a step ahead, and they took over this village there so they could hold everyone in it hostage. Some of the guild wizards went to try and help the villagers while the rest of them went after the dark wizards that were searching the mountainside. With the Council's group helping, the villagers began to fight back too, and everything got to be a real mess."

Lucy shook her head, trying to organize the jumbled bits of news they'd gotten from the area at the time into a coherent picture with the scattered bits of information that Natsu had told them later.

"This one dark wizard had taken a child from the village, and her father begged the guilds to get her back before anything could happen to her. Natsu went after her, since you won't find a better tracker in the kingdom. I think that's when he ran into you. You told him where to find the child. Natsu didn't know who you were, but when he found the girl, her kidnapper was dead, and she told him that you'd killed the man and then left. Natsu brought her home and then went back to look for you, because he wanted to know why you did what you did. I'm not really sure what happened after that, but... for some reason, instead of turning you in, he helped you hide until all the dark wizards involved were captured and the Council decided to give up the hunt for you."

Zeref looked into the darkness and rubbed absentmindedly at his arms through the sleeves of his coat. He couldn't imagine killing anyone. Thinking about it made him feel unsettled and a little cold. Natsu had told him that he'd been a dark wizard, but Zeref hadn't really thought much about what that might mean.

"Did I... kill a lot of people?" he asked, his voice sounding small and uncomfortable in his own ears.

Lucy sounded uncomfortable too when she answered, choosing her words with care, "Some of the things you did... caused a lot of people to die. You were cursed too, and that curse meant that death came to a lot of the people and animals that got closed to you. If it helps, I don't think you actually _wanted_ all those bad things to happen."

Zeref thought of his childhood nightmares of black fog and withering trees. Well, that did match up with some of what Natsu had told him, and it also explained why Natsu had said that he'd always seemed unable to allow himself true happiness. The Dragon Slayer had also said that he wouldn't call Zeref a criminal, but from Lucy's story, Zeref had to conclude that there had been moments when he had, indeed, chosen for someone else's life to end.

He shivered and drew his coat closer about himself.

"Let's talk about something else," Lucy said after the silence had gone on for a little too long.

"Yes," he agreed. "Something else might be preferable."

He wasn't sure he would have liked his past self very much, and despite his best efforts, that bothered him just a little. He could only assume that, despite everything, Natsu had found something about him back then worth caring about. He picked up the water bottle again and turned it over in his hands, the metal and glass exterior cool against his skin.

There was a long silence, then Lucy said, "Sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have told you."

Zeref shook his head. "I was the one who asked. I just... didn't think it would make me so uncomfortable. I'd already made up my mind not to care about the past. I suppose I'm bound to hear rumors eventually though, so perhaps it's best that I know a little about what people are likely to say before I hear it. At least I understand now why Natsu thought me coming to this world might not be a good idea."

"You're taking all this really well."

"I'm not. Not really. I just don't make a habit of letting it show."

"Oh."

Well, that was very frank of him, Lucy thought.

"I suppose I'd better work out how I feel about things before we meet up with Natsu again," Zeref continued, sounding more as though he were talking to himself. "He'll know if I'm upset. I never could hide anything from him. Not, I suppose, that I've ever wanted to."

Lucy looked away from the shadowy figure of the other wizard, partially shrouded by glowing, spidery letters. For some reason, right at this moment, looking at him made her a little sad. He symbolized so much of the turbulence in Earth Land's history, not to mention the turbulence in the lives of her and her friends over the past few years. That wasn't his fault, not really, not of the Zeref sitting in front of her now. But here he was, still caught up in the shadows of it all. Here they _all_ were, still trying to figure things out.

Maybe the atmosphere of this place was just getting to her. Still...

"For what it's worth," she said, closing her eyes, "we're glad you're visiting. Everyone at the guild's curious to meet you. You'll probably hear some bad stuff attached to your name, but I wouldn't let it get to you. You were a legend, after all, and the thing about legends is that a lot of what people say isn't true. You seem like a nice person. I'm sure other people will see that too."

Long after the Celestial Wizard had finally joined their other companions in slumber, Zeref continued to sit in the dark, mulling over their conversation. Maybe it was strange, but he'd never really thought about whether or not he was a nice or a good person. He _wanted_ to think that he was a good person, but what did that mean really? Had he been a good person back then, even when he'd made the decision to take another person's life? If he had shared his past self's life experiences, would he have made the same kinds of choices?

Giving his head a hard shake, Zeref glanced back at his notes. He had to stop thinking about all that. They were pointless speculations. The darkness and the enclosed space was just preying on his mind, and what he really ought to focus on instead was how to get them all out of here. Everything would look better if they could just get back outside.

* * *

 **TBC...**

* * *

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End file.
